수자원공사 웹진 물, 자연 그리고 사람

Living alone is becoming easier and easier. With single-member households making up 35% of all households in the country, there is also a growing list of things designed to meet the needs of single-member households including small-size homes and home appliances, food items, and everyday household items. When they are lonely or in trouble, they can work with an interactive AI service to find a solution instead of turning to family or friends. People will more likely choose to be by themselves than to be together with others.
Clearly, there is a difference between being forced to be alone when you want to be with someone and choosing to isolate yourself from others. Conflicts are bound to occur when people get together. Even when you are the only one who gets to decide, a conflict arises in your own mind as to what to choose. When people with different views and preferences work together, the chance of conflicts increases sharply. If you are the sole decision maker, however, you are your own boss and you call all the shots. When you are the only one involved in the decision-making process, you have fewer things to worry about. Things are much simpler and easier. Best of all, you can focus on yourself and what you want when you are alone.

When I was a resident in medical school, there was a 100-day duty. It was part of the residency program. A resident is on duty, never going home for the first 100 days in the first year of residency. There was virtually no time for me to be alone. One of the trickiest things was eating every meal together with others on duty. In the morning, I would make coffee and set the table with instant cup noodles, bread, and other snacks for breakfast. We ate lunch and dinner together every day. A second-year resident and I had different food preferences, which made it difficult to eat meals together.
“Dr. Kim, I’m craving spicy chicken for dinner. How about you?” the other resident asked me. Back then, I was never willing to go through the trouble of making myself understood or negotiating different preferences. In fact, I did not know how. So, I just grumbled to myself, "I don’t like spicy or greasy food, and I am not hungry." But then again, I thought to myself, "If I suggest something he doesn’t like, it will only make him uncomfortable and I may get on his bad side. It’s a good idea if I just let him have what he wants."
“Sure, let’s order spicy chicken.” Although I did not want spicy chicken at all, I would offer a quick response. Working on the same shift with the second-year resident was not pleasant at all. It was sheer pain in the neck.

If you decide to be with someone else, you have to give up the freedom and convenience of being alone, and the luxury of focusing on yourself. Although acting alone is free and easy, we often interact with others under different circumstances. We also gain quite a lot from being part of a group.
Obviously, it is simple and easy to run alone in many ways, but people form groups and get together at a set time and a set place to run together because there is certainly something good about it. As you run in sync with others on a running crew, running becomes more fun and you can run longer and faster. As you run closely behind lead runners, your posture gets better, too. Running with others can create synergistic effects.
Even when you are running with tens of thousands of other people in a marathon, you are actually running on your own after all. The feeling of being out of breath, the sense of heavy legs, and the temptation to quit—no one can feel all these feelings for you. Only you can feel all these feelings for yourself. Still, it is easier to go through difficult times when we stay together. Running with others can help keep you going instead of giving up as you realize that "Others are struggling to keep running like me," "The sound of her breathing tells me she's pushing her limit and still trying her best," and "I’ll push myself a little bit harder and keep running."

“Doctor Kim, I feel much better knowing that I’m not the only one who feels helpless and depressed. I even want to something new.” Many of my patients find comfort and consolation in the fact that everybody has a fair share of pain and suffering and others also feel as vulnerable and insecure as they do.
When you suffer from a stroke on one side of the brain, it causes paralysis or hypofunction in one arm. Then you depend on the other arm for most of your daily activities and the other arm may also get paralyzed or experience hypofunction even though the other side of the brain has not been affected by the stroke at all. Your right arm can function properly because your left arm has no functional problem. Similarly, our life cannot be complete if we live alone.
Although life as an attending physician was not easy, working with interns, residents, and fellow attending physicians was certainly a blessing because we as a team were better able to work out problems, handling crises in the course of training and learning. We had no choice but to trust and depend on one another to complete the training. We are independent beings yet connected to one another as social beings at the same time. We build and complete our life by living, working, and sharing with others who understand and validate us, based on the recognition of the value of togetherness.