SO GOOD QUOTES

What happens when a person, because of upbringing, fails in bonding with others, and is not able to form successful relationships? The person feels lonely, isolated, and estranged. 

This isolation and estrangement passes through three stages:

The first stage [consists of] grumbling and distress, in which the person feels pain because he is alone, and feels that he is a stranger and has nobody to ask about him, and that nobody loves him. But he may [even] grumble against God, and say that the Lord does not love him, and may grumble against society wherein he lives. This person complains, because he has failed in making sound relationships. For this person to overcome this matter, he has to deal with this pain in a positive way, and from it, as an impetus, set out to form relationships and friendships with others, and then he can heal himself and grow in a sound way. If he does not do this, he will enter into the next stage.

The second stage is what we call, the building up of the feelings of grumbling against everything around him, because the feeling of the pain of loneliness persists for a long time. So you find him grumbling against God and others, and against home, church, and school.

As for the third stage, it is the most dangerous, in which the person feels that he does not deserve to live, and then he ends his life and reaches the point of [committing] suicide.

From the aforementioned, the importance of forming relationships is made clear, and [also] bonding with God and entering into a relationship with God, so he will bask in the warmth of His love, and will attain success in his life, as Joseph bonded with God, and therefore, Scripture says, “The LORD was with Joseph, and he was a successful man.”

—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality