In the library we identify empty seats, even if there are vacant spaces by persons already seated.

For our comfort, we prefer private cars to commercial transport even if it is cheaper.

We love to live alone in big isolated homes to compound houses where there are company and love. Even so, we prefer our jobs, our families, our safety, our comfort, our believes to sharing these with others.

Why is man inherently individualistic and private, when we can simply open up and share? Fear!

We fear the other person as much as the other person fears us. Trust is an issue. Confidence in ourselves and in the other person to keep our best interest is not there . Examples abound about people being hurt by those they trusted in the past. But like all things, we must learn to love, learn to trust, learn to have faith and learn to live with the other person.

Everything around man, especially what keeps us alive are potentially harmful, yet, we have learnt to live with them and to master how to avoid their harmful sides.

Nothing is most dangerous than eating. We can eat poison or hurt ourselves while preparing a meal. Yet we have nonetheless, learn to cook and stay healthy with food. Food then, is not our enemy. It is our friend. When you learn to live with man, another man, you don't only focus on their negative sides and effects but the benefits that they bring . After all, who can live alone?

Fancy a world without the other person getting married to you because they are scared. Imagine a world where you are the only doctor, lawyer, banker, nurse, tailor, news caster etc. Such a world will be amazingly boring. It is different people who make the world go round.

The world is worth living because people are different from you. Like they say, it is the unlike poles that attracts.

In our differences, we are able to appreciate the speciality in others. Men can be attracted to women, children to adults, pagans be converted by the the man of faith and the sick by the doctor. We should see the other person as the one who makes living worth it.

Suspicions, fear and unwilling attitude betray our intentions rather than the other person's. They betray our insecurities rather than the other person's. And sure, they show our inadequate knowledge in relating to the other person instead of who the person actually is.

If we learn right and overcome our insecurities, it should be possible to see good in even the most callous of people instead of branding them as evil, insecure, untrustworthy and patronising.

If man have not only tamed lions, domesticated crocodiles and share apartment with reptiles because of their usefulness to us, but we are also able to master our way around them, why should any human-being be too impossible to live with, assuming we ourselves are angels?

Benjamin Akyena Brantuo
Broadcast Journalist with Ahotor 92.3 fm
benakyena@yahoo.com