Hi Mara,

Thank you very much for your comment, I truly appreciate it.

I do believe it’s important for us to be taking action. Like you said we should be going for walks, spending time with animals, and stop listening to all the negativity and bad opinions of people. As such, I feel that this program does help facilitate an atmosphere for that.

But at the same time, I’d still argue that while we shouldn’t entirely rely on other peoples opinions, I feel that even a small portion of ourselves does care about it. And it’s not something that we can entirely remove.

I’d like to think that we can shut off negativity and find happiness solely through ourselves and activities that we can do ourselves, but I believe some negativity is necessary. Enough to keep some kind of balance as too much positivity can actually be quite dangerous (i.e. toxic optimism). Not only that but looking at people, there are many social elements to ourselves that we can’t remove that were established back in our ancestral days.

I think that our happiness requires at least a little bit of support from other people. Or at least being around other people can help us recognize that other peoples opinions matter less and less. I know from my experiences that is how I felt.

I learned that being around other people helped me. Even if it didn’t help me directly, being around people was my source of happiness and brought me out of loneliness and depression.

You are right that we run into problems when we are disconnected of course, but when it comes to loneliness I feel the disconnection is more to do with a lack of people that make that lonely person feel needed, appreciated, and have a purpose. And in those kinds of situations, you’d think those people would have to have positive opinions of that person.

Again, it’s my thoughts, but I do appreciate you sharing your two cents on this situation. I think talking about this and looking at other angles is incredibly important, but also understanding where people are coming from is important when dealing with these complex issues.