DON’T GIVE UP ON PEOPLE, INVEST IN THEM!

“We no longer seek to recover human connections; we simply exchange. Unlike changing shoes, people, whether on social media or loved ones for others, we replace the pain of wear and tear with the allure of novelty. By no longer distinguishing people from objects, we are deceived, trading someone in the instant hope of becoming more interesting, unaware that the mirror still reflects the drama of this incessant search for the void caused by our own vanity.” (Marcello de Souza)

I know this statement may seem strange in today’s times. It’s not just now that we’ve gradually become accustomed to simply giving up on people, and today, to assert that we shouldn’t give up but instead invest in them may truly sound like madness, but it isn’t.

To understand the proposal, it’s necessary to first comprehend that we live in an immediate world that makes us increasingly rushed, missing the opportunity to perceive what is really happening with us, with others, and with the world around us. In this uninterrupted relationship with this world of growing urgency, the word ‘living’ seems to always come with the impression that its synonym is a lack of time. Lack of time for the affection given by relationships.

Without time, everything is now based on practicality. Why waste time reflecting through self-analysis on each experience lived, seeking to know more about who we are, why we are, what we can be, and what we can do to become better people if there are manuals available that can explain and determine everything we need to do to justify our lives and then find the much sought-after happiness.

It’s not surprising, given so much shallow literature that makes us believe that everything has become an object. The car, the house, the pet, as well as the people around us, don’t matter. As objects, everything is simpler because whenever something no longer suits us, we simply discard it and seek another to replace it. There’s no responsibility, and thus, in this post-modern madness, relationships with the world, for the most part, become as superficial as human values that are increasingly being distorted.

When we bring this to relationships, people come to be recognized by what they ‘have’ and no longer by what they ‘are.’ We end up getting used to qualifying people by possessions and displays in this theater of truths and certainties. Much of the fundamental reasons for human relationships have disintegrated due to the quantitative comparative condition of who can do more, dictated by rules in this normosis we increasingly believe we are a part of.

Individuality and arrogance are described in self-help manuals that not only determine what we need to be happy but also always bring a concept, rules, and explanations of why we are what we are, as an illusory condition of self-knowledge that claims to intend to help us understand but is actually just another way to justify ourselves as the person we are becoming. After all, we can choose which of these fantastic ready-made answers suits us best, just pay attention among so many futile and superficial theories to the one that suits us best and makes us feel better, like a dose of a drug to alleviate our own guilt and disillusionments.

Of course, this works for a moment, but not for the reasons of life. Perhaps it’s not without reason that people are so distrustful of each other. So distant and so unhappy in a world that is also increasingly sick.

In this sense, what I want to propose for reflection is that instead of giving up on people, we should invest in them. After all, we may want to find answers and justify much of ourselves, but we cannot absolve ourselves of all our choices that have brought us here and that make us who we are and how we relate to each other.

If you want to discover how your life is going right now, the quality of what you are doing with your life, just reflect on how your relationships are. As relational beings, the qualification of our existence lies in how healthy we are in human relationships. In relationships lie the affections, and hence, the response we give to the world about ourselves.

It’s not how many people we have around us, not the car, the boat, the house, not what you can buy, or the power gained in your job. All of this is important, all of this represents much of our trials and, in a certain dose, brings us joy, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Now, what qualifies our life is certainly in our relationships. Because even everything we achieve only has meaning when we have someone to share it with. Nothing is very exciting when individualistic. Isn’t that true!

Human matter is for the sake of relationships. We are relational beings; we need others to live, without others, we cannot even recognize ourselves. The fact is that we can become better people through these relationships in which we learn through experiences what is best for ourselves. The more we relate, the more we modify our lives. Individuality generates selfishness, and selfishness, in turn, brings truths and certainties to the surface, feeds beliefs, and creates paradigms worthy of a saddening life, an unhappy life.

Happiness! It’s useless to seek it anywhere else than in the warmth of human relationships… Only a good friend can take us by the hand and set us free. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Wind, Sand and Stars – 1939)

To relate is not simply to be with the other, but to present ourselves entirely so that people can recognize our parts. Being vulnerable, removing the masks so that the other is sure of who we are through our values, virtues, and principles, without being afraid to show our imperfections. It’s what is called the ethics of relationships, making sure the other expects nothing more than what we can really offer. It’s knowing how to listen, as well as knowing when to speak. Human relationships are a process of giving, empathy, and continuous learning. Accepting the other as they are in the same way we accept ourselves to recognize our own limits. Being in a relationship is dedicating ourselves to making a difference. It’s about how much we forgive ourselves and forgive others, looking into each other’s eyes, and how much we don’t give up, understanding that we are neither better nor worse than anyone else.

Relationship is about preserving life in the small things, in the small gestures, in the delicacy of good intention. To allow a relationship, we must first understand that nothing is eternal and that we are all here in this unique and exclusive moment seeking to survive in the best possible way. Everything we are today is the result of our experiences. My experience is not your life experience. We are unique in everything, but in relationships is the plurality of the human being. For a healthy relationship, we first need to understand that life is given by freedom.

Freedom is not an option, as Sartre used to say. Precisely because it is not an option, if we have come this far, it is because we chose, and if we chose it is because in the moment of choice, we decided for what represents more value for us. That’s the dynamics of life. We are constituted by choices, and each choice represents one more moment of experience to make other decisions. In this sense, we can say that we are the result of our experiences, and it is through them that we will recognize what we must do in the next moment. No moment of life will be repeated.

Nothing in life repeats itself, everything is unpublished and virginal, precisely because everything is what it must be, after all, each moment of life is a representation of the world we create for ourselves through our experiences. We cannot create another world than the one we previously experienced. In other words, it is not the world that makes us act, but the interpretation of the world that we have based on what we have already experienced in life. Do not be fooled, this is an unconscious action, the brain always makes its bets for the next moment based on what it already knows and that it carries within itself. If we are the result of our experiences and it is through them that we build our reality, this also applies to each relationship.

Perhaps the biggest mistake in life is to think that in relationships we will find answers about who we are and what we are, as well as the solution to what we want to be. Unlike that, relationships give us the opportunity to see the world through the experiences of the other and, with that, create more experiential content for our own lives. After all, every relationship is continuous learning that allows us to see beyond the capacity created by ourselves.

I hope that now you are able to understand that when we are in a relationship and we judge, criticize, and see defects in the other, it is not and never was a relationship, but rather a self-evaluation, a self-censorship of oneself since we are talking about our experiences, talking about ourselves, and what we are seeing is a reflection of what we are. We cannot be the other more than ourselves, and what the other represents to us is inside us. We do not create anything out of nothing, we need to have a base, an internal foundation based on our beliefs and truths to point to the other with the finger and say what is right and what is wrong. In the human dynamics, it is much easier for him to speak of the other than of himself.

Human beings have a lot of difficulty accepting who we are, not because there is within us a single self, but because we are formed by a systemic complexity that brings a large part of our genetics, the real formed by experiences given in our childhood as well as the idealized created from our learning given by life. This difficulty is what makes us create parallel realities, put on masks with the higher goal of being recognized and accepted. Precisely, these masks lead us to stop believing in the other, and often because the other makes us present ourselves completely, exposing exactly what we fear to see in ourselves. This fear of exposure is very subjective and belongs to each one, and is responsible for many of the decisions and disillusionments in life.

Many of the decisions were made in a moment when the other had his perspective on life and we had ours, that is, at every moment of life we are basing our reality on what we know until that moment, neither more nor less, so today it is easier to speak of past times from a different perspective, since from that moment other life issues have brought us learning and teachings that we did not have before, so what I mean by this is that if today there is a certainty of life, it is that that past moment will not be repeated, neither for you nor for the other, and everything is just an illusion from a perspective of the present.

Of course, if we put all this described here together, we soon realize that we really leave much of our relationships because of the dynamics of life, other times because of the fear of finding the worst in ourselves, as well as feeling impotent or guilty for not having made better decisions. But none of that matters for life. There is no way to materialize anything from the past and nothing from the future, there is only one moment to live and it happens right now.

So, we cannot judge, blame, regret or even want to justify, after all, what does it matter? What really matters is to understand that we are all in an evolutionary process and that each person carries within themselves a perspective of the world formed by beliefs that are the result of their own lived experiences. As life progresses, other experiences are formed, and many beliefs are redefined and others strengthened. So, learning with life is continuous. What I mean is that all human beings are in an evolutionary process. We all grow at every moment, each at their own speed and with their subjectivity about what is a good and happy life.

For all this, I reaffirm the initial sentence: do not give up on people, bet on them. Perhaps that person we judge so much, criticize, or who saddened us, may, like us, be in an evolutionary process in search of their best, and the experiences lived during this time have made her a much better person. Or maybe today, with the lifetime we have had and thanks to our new experiences, we are also able to perceive that what we once judged and criticized in the other no longer makes sense, and that we no longer see the person in the same way.

Also, allow yourself to understand that if we still judge, criticize, or even condemn another person, perhaps the problem is in us, and who needs to work more on self-awareness and seek this internal self-growth is not the other but ourselves. We only know that we are healed when what we saw as the worst in the other ceases to exist and make sense within ourselves.

In conclusion, never forget that we are all worthy of imperfections and that it is through them that we become better people. Just like each one of us, the other also deserves its own evolution. We need to relearn not to give up so easily on things and, above all, on people, and realize how much of what bothers us in the other belongs to us. This, in fact, is a process of evolution in the most integral sense of self-healing!

Thus, amid the reality of life, we understand that human relationships are a magnificent stage, where each actor brings with them a unique narrative. Not giving up on people is, indeed, a commitment to our own evolution. By betting on each other, we not only embrace the diversity of paths but also recognize the opportunity to enrich our own storyline.

In a world that often urges us to abandon, persistence in relationships becomes the ultimate expression of our humanity. The continuous learning provided by encounters challenges us to surpass limits, question prejudices, and discover the extraordinary in the simplicity of each interaction.

May we carry with us the certainty that, by not giving up on people, we are not only investing in their journeys but also cultivating the fertile soil from which the rare flowers of mutual understanding and unconditional acceptance blossom. May the bet on relationships be our tribute to the grandeur of the human experience. And thus, as we look back, may we contemplate a life punctuated not only by individual achievements but by an intricate mosaic of connections that indelibly transformed the course of our existences.

May each relationship be a unique symphony, played by the singular instruments of each person we encounter along the way. In this concert of life, may the final note resonate like a harmonious melody, worthy of a journey marked by the courage to never give up, but instead, to bet, believe, and, above all, love. May this be how our story is written, and may each page be deserving of a complex and beautiful life evaluation, after all, relationships are the light that illuminates the shadows of our limited perception.

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Hello, I’m Marcello de Souza! I started my career in 1997 as a leader and manager of a large company in the IT and Telecom market. Since then, I have been involved in major projects structuring, implementing, and optimizing telecommunications networks in Brazil. Restless and passionate about behavioral and social psychology. In 2008, I decided to delve into the universe of the human mind. Since then, I have become a professional passionate about unraveling the secrets of human behavior and catalyzing positive changes in individuals and organizations. A Ph.D. in Social Psychology, with over 25 years of experience in Cognitive Behavioral Development & Human Organization. With a broad career, I highlight my roles as:

• Master Senior Coach & Trainer: I guide my clients in pursuit of goals and personal and professional development, providing extraordinary results. • Chief Happiness Officer (CHO): I promote an organizational culture of happiness and well-being, boosting productivity and employee engagement. • Expert in Language & Behavioral Development: I enhance communication and self-knowledge skills, empowering individuals to face challenges with resilience. • Cognitive Behavioral Therapist: I use cutting-edge cognitive-behavioral therapy to assist in overcoming obstacles and achieving a balanced mind. • Speaker, Professor, Writer, and Researcher: I share valuable knowledge and insights in events, training, and publications to inspire positive changes. • Consultant & Mentor: My experience in leadership and project management allows me to identify growth opportunities and propose personalized strategies.

My solid academic background includes four post-graduate degrees and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, as well as international certifications in Management, Leadership, and Cognitive Behavioral Development. My contributions in the field are widely recognized in hundreds of classes, training sessions, lectures, and published articles.

Co-author of the book “The Secret of Coaching” and author of “The Map Is Not the Territory, the Territory Is You” and “The Society of Diet” (the first of a trilogy on human behavior in contemporaneity – 09/2023).

Allow me to be your partner in this journey of self-discovery and success. Together, we will unravel a universe of behavioral possibilities and achieve extraordinary results.

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