We’ve all been there: a romantic relationship ends, a friendship drifts apart, a job role falls out, or even a small conversation with a stranger turns sour and leaves you both feeling a bit bitter. It’s normal to leave those situations thinking “wow, I could’ve been doing something else all that time”. I’ve heard a lot of comments about how the time spent with someone, in a personal or professional relationship that has since ended, was wasted. I learned, some years into college, that there’s a different perspective that fuels self-growth, and left me feeling more accepting and focused on what I could change, rather than wishing I could go back and re-do experiences.

Every interaction teaches us something. That might be our likes/dislikes, what we want to change about ourselves and what we don’t, and how we choose to navigate other interactions in the future. They might teach us patience, adaptability, that we’re not as strong as we thought we were, or that we’re stronger than we thought we were. Even if there may have been a more beneficial interaction that we could have had, doesn’t mean that these interactions we’re having won’t be beneficial to us in another way. It might be in a way we don’t expect, like creating empathy in ourselves that we didn’t have, a greater ability to help others and see their perspective, or improving how we communicate and build our interpersonal skills. These skills are something computers can’t take away from us.

Machines cannot truly understand why people have a viewpoint when it’s based in an emotion. They don’t understand ethics, pain, illness, or disability on a foundational level, in a way a human being would. Computers do not inherently understand how two individuals could have very different energy levels even if their lives were exactly the same in every other way, simply because of their health, perspective, or feelings. Computers do not have the ability to cultivate something that makes us stronger in our humanity: connection. Everything we do is centered around people; we cannot survive without other people. It is my thought that there’s no such thing as a wasted interaction. Our greatest strength as humans is the ability to engage in deeper connections, both good and bad. That other person didn’t waste my time, the only one that can do that is me, by not seizing the opportunity to learn. Every interaction I’ve ever had has taught me something about myself or about life.

Sometimes people in our lives teach us things about ourselves, sometimes they teach us things about the world, even if one of those things is the extent of human cruelty. There are also some interactions that teach us the extent of kindness. The cruelty makes you appreciate the kindness, just like the kindness makes you understand just how cruel someone has to be to say and do certain things. They provide balance and meaning to our lives and the people and things in them. In this age of AI, and what feels like an abundance of human cruelty, I want to make a strong effort to interact with others. I want to utilize my biggest human strength: connection, and learn and grow in that connection. I cannot directly change the world, but I can change myself and my perspective and the contributions I make to it. The more I learn from all the connections, good and bad, the more I can grow and contribute to the good I want to see in the world and in my life. If I’m not utilizing the biggest strength of my own humanity, the part of myself a machine can’t replace, then what the heck am I doing here?