empty lives filled with people

At this time in my life I don't have contact with many people. Life's events have turned me toward introspection. I find from time to time concerns of what other people may think or say about me or my family. Silly? Perhaps. Human? Definitely! When I look at it further, however, I conclude that there is no use for nor reality in this kind of thinking. Delusion might be a good word to use here. It only brings bondage. What does it even matter what others think? I'd rather be free.

I read this paragraph this morning taken from The Way To Love by Tony de Mello. I think most of the world lives like this. Lives empty... filled with people.

"Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a stranglehold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirit soaring with their praise, to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. Take a look at yourself spending almost every waking minute of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their company, desire their love, dread their ridicule, long for their applause, meekly submit to the guilt they lay upon you; you are terrified to go against the fashion in the way you dress or speak or act or even think. And observe how even when you control them you depend on them and are enslaved by them."