A few days ago, my friend sent me a troubling message which read, “I feel like I wasted my life.” As I listened to her closely, she was quite worried about human relations and stressed because of them. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, got it right when he asserted “Human beings are social animals” and no one can live alone. People hang out together and maintain relationships by forming a society and continually interacting with others. Human relations are important because we have to live by interacting with others. However, there are a lot of people who get stressed because of human relations. After listening to my friend, I thought ‘Everybody is worried about human relations. I wasn’t the only one who was worried about it.’ Actually, I was quite worried about my human relations for the past 2 years.
  I entered CBNU after retaking the CSAT. The year I turned 20 I had to spend all my time in an academy preparing for retaking the exam, so I couldn’t meet my friends who entered university right away. On top of that, I couldn’t meet them because I entered a university located in another region. As a result, they often met each other and made many memories while I was alone here in Cheong-ju, and I felt like we were naturally drifting apart. They had always been my priority, but I thought I was not important to them anymore. This thought was lurking in my mind for 2 years, and I started to think that I’m always alone. I had many superficial friends, but I was convinced that no one thought of me as important and, therefore, I was so lonely for 2 years.
  However, now I’m neither lonely nor worried about human relations anymore. I tried hard to overcome loneliness for 2 years and finally found the answers I used to wonder, ‘Am I the problem? Did I do something wrong?’, finally I don’t feel lonely anymore as I relaxed after finding the answers. To stop being worried about human relations you have to find ‘intact me’.
  To find intact me you have to affirm yourself by frequently thinking and saying something positive to yourself, first. I always gave myself the stick because of my perfectionist tendency. I changed my major, studied hard, and got a good grade even in a new major. Others may have thought that I got good results, but I continued to think something was lacking and the more I achieved my goals, the more I felt empty. It took me 2 years to realize that what was lacking was self-affirmation. So, I regularly said something positive to myself - like ‘I’m doing well.’ Then, my anxious mind became peaceful and I gained a lot of confidence no matter what I did. As I gained more confidence, I realized that it was not my fault that human relations didn’t go my way. Then, I no longer felt skeptical about them.
  Secondly, I decided to make me-time to find intact me. I always considered others as my priority, but as I realized that I lived under the influence of others, so I left SNS and, consequently, had a lot of my own time. I stopped trying to please my friends, I often went where I wanted to go by myself, and started walking a lot. Quitting SNS made a huge difference because I didn’t have to compare others’ exterior minds to my inner mind. Plus, I could fully concentrate on what I like and I didn’t think about my human relations as much. Focusing fully on myself helped me to experience many wonderful things.
  Admitting our respective differences could be the answer for fortifying human relations, also. Reading a lot of books was particularly helpful to admitting the differences. I read many novels because it was fun to experience many people’s lives vicariously through books. As I read books written from the main character’s point of view, I could accept that many people think differently from me. I learned from books that what I considered to be natural may not be natural to others and that people have different values. As I applied this to the human relations in my life, I realized that my friends had their own priorities, and that it did not necessarily mean that I was not important to them. I could stop thinking about human relations by admitting the differences between me and my friends.
  I’d like to tell CBNU students who are genuinely worried about human relations “Don’t get too stressed about human relationships. Knowing yourselves first and loving yourselves lead to others loving you. Therefore, focus on yourselves first, not others.”