It is well known that all pity starts in self-pity. The same could be said for taking life too seriously – that it starts in taking oneself too seriously. The difficult lesson to learn is that we are at our best when we join in and forget ourselves; when we stop being a self and become a process, of and for change. Gregory Bateson famously said: There are no objects, only relationships. What matters, what's real, is not life but how I relate to life, not self but how I relate to self, not the Other but how I relate to Otherness. I am real, of consequence, only in my relations.