Hurting Ourselves…and Others…

There are two acceptable assumptions that we can hurt ourselves without hurting others; and the assumption that we can hurt others without hurting ourselves. The words of John Muir come to mind: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”¹ We are all of us interrelated. Young people cannot hurt themselves without hurting parents and all the people they are part of. We all carry around with us the reputation—the interests—of others as well as our own—of family and friends, community and country.

The success of children is the success of parents. The sorrow of children is the sorrow of parents.

If a person partakes of things that impair his physical and mental capacity, he loses in some degree what he could have been, what he could have done, and the world loses—and his loved ones lose. If by some wrong or foolish choice, some indifference to facts some wilful ignoring of law—the laws of health, the laws of life—if by this someone becomes ill or injured or impaired in capacity, others must care for him. If a life is prematurely lost, or lessened, the world is less.

Some centuries ago John Donne summarized this thought in some moving, sobering words that have been much sung and said: “No man is an island, entire of itself;…Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefor never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”²

We cannot hurt ourselves without hurting others. We cannot hurt others without hurting ourselves. This, young people—indeed all of us—would well remember—for, in success or sorrow, families, friends, loved ones belong to each other—and if we hurt ourselves or misuse ourselves, the hurt carries over to others also. “No man is an island.”