The Other: The Source of My Meaning and My Happiness
By Josi Joseph, Psychologist, Group Editor, Global TV +91 94468 48191
As I reflect on human life, I realize something that appears simple but holds extraordinary depth: I have no existence, no meaning, and no happiness without the other. My emotions, my sense of self, and even my tensions arise only in the presence of another human being. Without you, I am only a biological unit, and the only emotion left in such isolation is fear. Every other feeling—love, joy, sadness, pride, guilt, purpose—requires someone else to exist. This insight became the foundation of my understanding of human happiness, relationships, and counseling.
When I look at history, I see that many great traditions have touched parts of this truth. Buddhism speaks of pratītyasamutpāda, the interdependent arising of all things. It teaches that nothing exists independently, and that suffering appears when we cling to the illusion of a separate self. Yet Buddhism does not explicitly say that without the other, only fear remains, or that the presence of the other is the source of meaning. It shows the interconnectedness of all life, but it does not draw the psychological line that meaning requires the mirror of another consciousness.
Philosophy too has circled this idea. Martin Buber spoke about the I–Thou relationship, saying that the “I” becomes real only in the presence of the “Thou.” Emmanuel Levinas went further, suggesting that the face of the other places an ethical responsibility upon me. Yet neither formulated the simple, direct truth I began to see in my counseling sessions: my happiness, my tension, and my very identity arise only because the other exists. Without you, there is no comparison, no longing, no joy, no purpose—nothing except the primal motion of fear.
In psychology, relational theorists have shown that the self is socially constructed. Our identity is shaped by the responses of others; mirror neurons reflect emotional states; attachment theory reveals that safety is formed in relationship. Yet psychology still treats the self as something that stands alone and is completed by the other, not something that is created by the other. My experience tells me something stronger: the self is impossible without the other. The moment I take away the presence of another human mind, everything collapses into a raw fear of existence.
Even cosmology provides a parallel. The universe itself emerges from interaction—matter exists through relationships between particles; gravity binds the cosmos; atoms form only through balanced forces. Nothing exists alone. The universe is not a collection of isolated units; it is a web of relational dynamics. Likewise, the human self is a relational field, not an isolated island. I am a constellation of responses, reflections, and meanings that arise only because you stand before me.
From this realization comes the deeper insight that guides both my philosophy and my counseling practice: since the other gives me existence, I must give the other equal importance as I give myself. This is not moral instruction; it is existential truth. If my happiness and my meaning depend on you, then your happiness is as essential for my well-being as my own. When I begin to think about your happiness, rather than only my fear, my own tension dissolves. What I feared was never you—it was the possibility of losing meaning, connection, or acceptance.
Every tension I encounter in counseling reveals this same structure. Behind anger, insecurity, guilt, anxiety, and conflict, I always find fear—fear of losing love, fear of being misunderstood, fear of being unvalued, fear of being alone. Fear is the first motion. Happiness is the equilibrium we seek. Counseling simply becomes the process of helping a person move out of unnecessary fear and return to a state of inner balance. When I support someone to appreciate the uniqueness of others, to see relationships not as threats but as sources of meaning, their tension naturally softens. They begin to feel the expansion that I call positive pleasure.
Through years of observation, reflection, and clinical experience, I have come to believe that the self, meaning, tension, and happiness are all relational phenomena. I cannot exist meaningfully without you. My happiness is interwoven with your happiness. My fears are born in relationship, and so is my liberation. When I choose to give you the same importance I give myself, I align with a fundamental law of human existence: the law that everything meaningful arises in connection.
If this understanding becomes widespread, I believe it can free individuals from unnecessary tensions and guide them toward a more harmonious, meaningful, and happy life. In seeing each other not as threats but as the very source of our existence, we rediscover what all great traditions attempted to teach in different ways: that our lives are fulfilled only in relation, and that happiness becomes real only when shared.
