The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote in his book "autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence" about ethics as “responsibility for the other,” but he also warned about losing oneself in that responsibility. There’s a difference between not punishing people for our pain and hiding our pain entirely.
Levinas describes the ethical relationship as asymmetrical--the other calls us to us from a height, and we respond before we've ever chosen to. We're "elected" to responsibility, as he puts it.
The other
The other is the center of everything for Levinas. In western philosophy, the self usually comes first. Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." The subject is the foundation, and others are just extensions or complications. Levinas flips this: the other comes first.
The self
For him, the self is constituted through responsibility. You don't exist as a self first and then decide to be ethical. Rather, the ethical call from the other creates the self. You become a subject--a "me"--precisely in the moment you respond to the other's demand.
The self is the hostage to the other. Not in a negative sense of being trapped, but in the sense of being infinitely responsible, unable to slip away from the call. The self is elected, chosen by the other before it ever chooses itself.
(I can go on and on it gets way too heavy. Let's just skip for now.)
The asymmetry
The asymmetry is crucial here: the other is higher than me. They don't owe you the same responsibility you owe them. This isn't reciprocal. You can't say "I'll be responsible for you if you're responsible for me." The relationship is one-way--from you to them.
But the danger is when that asymmetry becomes total. When the self becomes merely a function of the other's needs, a vessel that empties itself completely. When ethics becomes the erasure of self, care turns into just plain devoid. You measure your worth by how little of you remains in the room. You call it love, or patience, or understanding, but beneath it is a slow vanishing that no one asked of you.
The subtle art is in learning to be for the other without being only for the other. To witness their suffering without becoming merely a witness. To give without becoming the gift itself.
Levinas would say that true responsibility doesn't actually require the disappearance of the self--it requires the self to be constituted through that responsibility. But there's a difference between being constituted and being consumed. We need to learn to not be the one who gives everything away, but the one who keeps checking in, who keeps asking "is this still me?"
There's no final answer to this. No point where you get to say "I've figured it out." It's more like surfing--constant small adjustments to stay upright. Sometimes you lean far too forward the other and have to pull back. Sometimes you pull back too far and feel the loss of connection.
But here's my final answer when it comes to the other:
There is a loneliness that comes from being too self-sufficient, too careful, too good at holding your own weight. You build a life where no one has to worry about you, where your pain never spills over, where you are always the one who shows up. And in that loneliness, you almost convince yourself that this is strength--that needing no one is the same as being free.
But then someone looks at you. Really looks. Not at the performance, not at the polished version, but at the whole messy truth of you. And in that look, something breaks open. Not because they are like you, but because they are not. Because they exist outside your orbit, with their own gravity, their own needs, their own fragility.
And suddenly you are not alone in the universe you built. You are here, with them, for them, changed by them. That is the interruption that saves us. That is how we become human. That is why I (the self) am constituted by the other.
The other is the one who interrupts my solitude. They pull me out of my self-absorption, my egoism, my tendency to just exist for myself.
(Thank you, Levinas, for creating such a bottomless book. And thank you, the other, for being my final answer.)