What Togetherness Means to Me

"Togetherness" is but a new and re-vitalized name for a primal human need. To live richly and fully - perhaps to live at all - man must be able to live with at least some others. To satisfy this deep hunger he has devised friends, family, tribe, club... and touched them with love, the better to hold them together. Where these are lost, with nothing to replace them, man is lost.

Schopenhauer likened human beings to hedgehogs who were j drawn close to each other for warmth, but were pushed away by their quills. The United Nations is a bold and noble dream, of nations dequilled, of a republic of compassion, of men and women who will not let love perish from this earth, who will, in the words of the Charter of the United Nations, "practice tolerance and live together in peace."

A. S. Bokhari, 1957.

It was written as part of a series on "Togetherness" in McCall's Magazine, February 1957. Among others who contributed to the series were Norman Peale and Walt Disney.