We exist! We coexist?

2026-01-16 19:06:00, Opinione Ardi Stefa

We exist!
This is indisputable. We breathe, we vote, we love, we curse, we work, we eat, we sleep, we leave, we return, we survive.

But do we coexist?
Or do we simply occupy the same territory, pushing, excluding, and consuming each other?

In politics, opposition has turned into hostility. Not debate, not alternative, not ideas against ideas. Enemy! The opponent is no longer someone who thinks differently, but someone who must be eliminated from the screen, from the public space, from legitimacy!
Today, you must politically and morally delegitimize the opponent in order to have a false "coexistence" under the noise of propaganda.

Albanian society reflects this logic precisely. Divided into camps that do not speak, but scream. That do not listen to understand, but to oppose and anathema. Poor against poor, young against old, “successful” against “lazy”.

Every category has found someone else to blame. No one looks up. Because it's easier to fight what you think is right next to you than to challenge the system that has put everyone in a never-ending race.

At the human level, coexistence has become formal. We live next to each other, but not with each other. We have social networks, but less and less society. We have selective sensitivity: we are touched only when we are touched personally. The pain of others is a statistic, a breaking news story, a “scroll”. Solidarity has become a big word for exceptional cases and not an everyday practice.
The irony is that we all talk about tolerance, but we live with impatience. We talk about democracy, but we behave as owners of the truth. We talk about freedom, but we do not tolerate different opinions. Coexistence requires something much more difficult than existence: accepting the other without the condition that they become like me.
Politics has taught us that compromise is weakness. Society has convinced us that empathy is a luxury. And we, tired, have accepted to close ourselves in our shell: “Let’s save ourselves, the rest is none of my business.” This is how a country is built where everyone exists, but no one coexists.

Coexistence is not artificial harmony, nor fake smiles.
It is managed conflict, it is respected difference, and debate without hatred.

It is accepting that the other may be right, or at least the right to be different.

It is to understand that without the other, even your existence is truncated.
If we continue like this, we will have everything: institutions, elections, screens, speeches. But we will not have society. Because society is not built by individuals who only exist, but by people who co-exist, even when they disagree.

And I return to the question from the beginning: "Do we exist! Do we coexist?"
We exist, yes! Do we coexist? No!

Are we ready to coexist?