Empathy: The Seed-bed of Love

 

Ever saw the paradox of killing with one hand and saving with the other? We do it man! Systematically, institutionally and with our collective social ethos.

How precious is a new-born life! It’s more precious than anything else on earth. You cannot find anything to weigh its equal in the opposite pan. Nothing matters more than the survival of a new-born child. It becomes the primary cause. You become its sky and earth, sheltering this water bubble to keep its shiny film of time-dome reflecting in your eyes. There it merges with your dreams and your dreams rush out into the broad daylight to shake hands with your destiny. You cup your hands over it to save this feeble light from going off even by the slightest whiff of air.

Look at the way the little signs of life in a just born, fragile, weak and soft infant, are picked up and held to heart with so much love, care and affection! You hold the tiny seed, so small that it can be blown away by a little whiff of air from the mouth, and see it growing into a big banyan. It becomes larger and more important than you, nourished by the dewy showers of your heart, honey-sweet sips of your emotions and defended by the ramparts of your protectiveness.

A new-born clings to survival like it is held to life just by an invisible string of a cobweb, which may snap at the slightest carelessness. So we dreamily hold dear life like dreams spread on our eyelashes. It’s our own image we hold, our chance to survive in future, a continuation of our journey, a furtherance of our hopes, aspirations, passions and the culmination of all our struggles. It’s a reward for all our perspiring work. It’s the medicine for all the ailments that plague us. A child, a new life, is a symbol of our belief in the freshness and meaningfulness of the journey, the great art of doing, of making, the story of continuing the march. That’s how we nurture a new life.

If not for this instinct, no child will ever survive. After all, it’s such a tiny lamp and the storms are so strong. Why is it that once that very life grows up, we grow so apathetic to it that its decimation and destruction hardly counts as anything more than a routine news item? Why killing becomes more expected and natural than saving lives? Why are there more people ready to kill than those eager to save lives?

It’s the futile game of doing and undoing. Just making and then breaking. It’s the mad, crazy force that has kept us to the level of mere struggling pack of humans who are as miserable like they were thousands of years ago. It is the bondage that holds us back, stopping us from becoming superhuman, which was otherwise our destination given the beginning we had in the loveable most and caring hands. But we first do and then undo: the nasty cycle of creating and destroying.

A part of us is making, and the majority is involved in destroying. And we remain where we started from. We nurture new life like the dearest jewel to the self, and then we get busy in the mad frenzy to kill and destroy those very dear lives. It’s self annihilation. It’s like raising crops with all the care and then burn them. Sounds nonsensical, isn’t it?

We are born as a tiny ball of love. That is the essential seed of love. Even suicide bombers were once innocently laughing infants. Why then love gets buried deeper and deeper as we grow? Well, a lot has to do with our collective values, education system and family set-up. We basically raise kids to be more competitive and not loving and considerate beings. The latter are taken as signs of weakness. No wonder you have too many fighters. Just try to recall the last time you tried to make your child learn the importance of empathy! In winning, goals, ambition, competence and technology you may have given hundreds of lectures. So don’t cry over the evil spin-offs. You systematically bury the blossoms of love and then cry over the prickly cacti.  

Don’t you think our formal education can absorb a bit of the element of empathy? You can make rockets through science, and you hesitate to inculcate few fundamentals of understanding others’ concerns. Science in the hands of inconsiderate, insensitive people becomes dangerous. On the other hand, in the hands of loving people, it becomes the common instrument of enjoyment, fun, laughter and life.  

On a positive note, all of us have our stock of empathy. Just that we try to keep it buried under apathy by pretending ignorance. We simply need a bit of courage to put it into practice. It's purely an unused resource with us. It is not a humungous task. All you need is to resonate with others’ feelings. That's it. It doesn't belittle you. It enlarges your persona. By opening, you grow only. It’s a simple natural law, a mundane pre-requisite to self-rewarding greatness. Don't expect laurels and citations from the government and other institutions out there. Your best judge, your soul, will give you one. And it won't disappoint you. Believe me.

In the rat race of high IQ, we have forgotten the beauty of soft talents like self-discipline and empathy. But these softest things make you the strongest of a person. It gives social and emotional intelligence. You simply cannot have loving, healthy relationships without it because empathy has a mysterious power.

There might not be too much of a correlation between empathy and IQ. Our brains after all have different parts for these. But then don't you think just developing the IQ is lopsided. Why has then nature given us the space for EQ in our brains? Nothing is redundant in nature, by the way.

Every man has a bit of woman in him, and every woman has a bit of man in her. Sexes are not simply biological brackets. It's basically about the broad nature of masculine and feminine qualities to complete the picture in nature. Masculinity (outflow, aggression, tendency to win, to take, spread, fast rush and overcome) and femininity (receptiveness, poise, stillness, acceptance, to give, to embrace, slow pace, geniality) are two broad qualities in nature propelling the cause of creation ahead.

So much as you cherish the headstrong machismo traits in you, the feminine power of qualities like empathy will only complete the picture of your persona. It gives you the healthy balance to walk the tightrope. So feel no shame in boosting your brain's right hemisphere for a bit of romance, artistry and empathy to broaden the picture. It only completes you.

Isn't it that broadening your sense of relatedness to include a bit of space around you, gives you a bigger identity? It does without any doubt. It becomes a pathway to freedom. Masculinity might be the sword in your hand, femininity on the other hand is the breast plate of hardest steel on your chest. Survival isn’t just about attacking. It also means having the capacity to bear the brunt of someone’s attack.

Pests of Criminality in the Love Crop: Apathy

 

Helen Keller: “We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.”

The moment one succumbs to apathy, one surrenders a considerable portion of his/her loving self. To nurture our indifference, we feign ignorance many times. Allowing the bug of apathy to bite you is an open invitation to get caught in the quagmire of stinking mediocrity. It robs you of your chance to be great in your own ways because no greatness is complete without a kind, considerate and loving heart.

Leo Buscaglia: “I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.”

The best in you is unfortunately buried under a layer of apathy. It needs to be dug out. Changing the world means basically changing our own self. Look outside and you find it the most daunting task. Look within and you find the key.

Handle apathy, and you can avoid the creeping bugs of skepticism, which will definitely save you from becoming a cynical being. After that nothing matters too pointedly to burn your self in agony.

And now for a clearer picture, look around. Beware, murderer and robber are just an arm-length away!

Long before we see outright criminals, there is a low intensity, almost intangible process at the mass scale that eats into common psyche, facilitating mass apathy, boosting millions of transgressions. It makes an individual careless of his step, as long as it helps in reaching the perceived objective, and so many times this tiny step carries the massive effect of spoiling someone’s journey altogether.

Feeling lucky not to have come across a real-life murderer with blood-ridden hands and a dagger in hand? Feeling at ease not to have faced a robber, with muscular barrel chest, eye-patch and devilish beard running away with yours and others’ money? Well think again for you might be grossly mistaken. There are murderers and robbers on the prowl around. And in far more numbers than you can ever think even in your wildest of horrifying imagination.

There is a lot more violence hidden under masks than you see in actual battles, street quarrels and brawls. Fire of hate on the surface may not actually give clue to the smoldering heat under the surface. 

It can be your sheepish looking, harmless milkman, holding the potent weapon of slow death over the years. Yes the milkman with his passable crime, with little doses over months and years. In India the fight for self-survival is so brutal that poor milkman won’t flinch an eye before mixing urea and adhesives like Fevicol to make adulterated milk. It breeds death, slowly over months and years, with no sign of a murder committed. To the milkman all that matters is a successful day with all the pots empty and sold out. What happens later is none of his concerns.

It can be the sweet-tongued sweet-maker pampering your sweet-tooth with an affable smile and still honeyed words. Yes the sweet-maker with his shortcuts to profits with fake milk derivatives and cancerous chemicals and colors. And there are many, as many as you count the sweet shops, except for the few moralistic ones. India is crammed to the guts, and the mere struggle to survive, at any cost and through whatever means, justifies the end to get more bucks in the wallet.

It can be the poor-looking harmless fruit vendor. You even end up having sympathy for him. Little do you realize that the fruits you presume to add to your life are in fact cutting into your days. Their expertise to survive the cutthroat competition lies in artificial, cancerous, chemical-catalyzed ripening, waxing on the surface to make stale fruits look fresh and scores of other devil-devised machinations to get some more bucks at the cost of disease and destruction in others’ livers.

These are the murders on the safer side of law. Nobody dies instantly. Death comes slowly. It’s a visibly causeless disease. Nobody can be blamed. They vend out poison slowly, in mild doses. They add a day to their survival at the cost of years from the lives of those whom they serve.

There are robbers around as well, in clean shirts and socially respected avatars. Law cannot touch them because they don’t rob outrightly like the condemnable criminals barging into a bank and running away with the whole vault of money and gold. They do it in slow sips over years, as invisible cogs in the corrupt machinery. In both governmental and private institutions and departments, these legalized robbers sit on their desks with an affable smile and clean slate. It’s facilitation money. The extra money has to land invisibly into their pockets to move the process stuck at their check-post.  

Then there are countless petty criminals and transgressors, stomping their way to their destination at any cost. It’s an ant-swarm. Law never looks more impotent than in the face of such brazen frequency, everywhere, every moment: spitting, urinating, defecating, shouting, molesting, eve-teasing, raping and countless other forms of violence from the mildest to the heinous most. It makes it seem as if the rulebook is just a draw of lots for all the criminals around. Only a few are unlucky to get their name taken out as legal offenders. The rest clap over their luck for being left out.  

So there are murderers and robbers all around. And law cannot sneak into each and every soul to arise either fear or conscience to think of injustice done to others’ in the struggle to survive. Poverty and greed make a person too thick-skinned to be sensitive to the world beyond the self. The only option is to hope for a generational shift when more people will be aware of the issues beyond the limited self. Don’t you think we need to have the topics of kindness, consideration and civic sense in our curriculum?

Unfortunately with the Indian population ever-exploding, and more people fighting for diminishing resources, it seems a dream to visualize a society where the milkman, the fruit-vendor, the sweet-maker, the government officials and rest of the horde will become humane enough to be self-responsible and follow the laws even if there is no apparent risk of getting caught.

Law-abiding instincts get honed over a period of time. It’s like stopping at a red light on a totally empty road, in the depths of night, with absolutely nobody around, and no fear of punishment, but you still put up breaks, and smile. It gives a strange sense of contentment to be self-responsible for such tiny transgressions. Just looking forward to a day when majority of the Indians will come out of the pit of self-obsessed survival and be self-responsible not just for their own existence but for others’ convenience as well. 

Considerate individuals make a loving society where you at least take care of your fellow journeymen’s interests, or at least try not to stomp over neighborly feet. In this manner, we can avoid a stampede at least. With our little caring outlook in traffic, in parking lots, in bazaars, and everywhere, a small rectified step is far more effective in changing the system than you believe. If you still have any doubts about the effectiveness of your considerate, caring step, which in effect mathematically add to loving kindness, then I take some time to narrate an Arabic story.

A fire broke out in a city. Everybody was running around to salvage as much as possible before escaping to safety. From the wealthiest to the poorest, from the strongest to the weakest, all appeared in a mad frenzy to take something more from the pits of fire. A small sparrow but was seen scurrying back and forth between a pond nearby and the burning city. It would take a beakful of water and drop it into the fire. A powerful man saw this and laughed, “O little sparrow, when the world is burning, and so high and mighty find themselves helpless to do anything, what will your tiny drops do?” The sparrow said, “It might not mean much to the fire, but on the day of the judgment I will have the freedom of saying that I did what I could.”

Well, I don’t think we need to say more on this to emphasize the point.

Chronic Self-seeking: Love’s Enemy

 

Selfishness is the mask we wear to hide the vulgar lines of our fears and insecurities. We, self-pitying, covering our self-fulfillment, justify our self-conceit under the stated principle of practical tools of survivability in a dangerous world.

Long before you fight to earn respect, try it with self-respect. Self-respect increases with decreasing selfishness. But most often we stand for self-pity, taking selfishness as the mark of our achievement. Mark my words, it’s nothing but an effort to maintain a false position.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

Well, selfishness is the real life manifestation of an inconsiderate nature. And the symptom and the disease both point to a bigger reality, lack of loving kindness.

In the natural scheme of things, it's a walk on the tightrope of giving and taking. Trees draw nutrition from earth and give back fruits, foliage, oxygen and more. We humans have a tendency to take more and give less. It’s perhaps an off-shoot of our oversized brain. But then don't you think being take-oriented has turned it into an unnatural stampede, toppling natural cycles and dislodging natural laws. It's literally a big house on fire and everybody running around to gather as much as possible.

Quite ironically, we term such mad frenzy as the mark of progress and development. Guys, most of the time we are simply running away to find solutions to the problems created by us only. If you put greed in the forefront as a collective goal at the largest level, all endeavors turn counterproductive and leave us with two more problems with every solution we find. After a time, the pool of problems becomes so large, having crossed the critical limit of sustainability, that progress and development amount to be mere futile efforts at finding solutions to the mountain of problems.

Little do we realize that salvaging petty things doesn't matter anymore if the house itself has burnt, another matter that we always contrive morally better-sounding justification for our chronic self-pursuits. But it requires no brains of a mathematical genius to realize that in a scenario where everybody is shooting off to grab the cake, what will be the result.

My humble words might sound dull in front of the dazzling sun of enlightened selfishness. But believe me it has turned the scale too lopsided to survive. Loving kindness is the counter-weight. Policies at the institutional level should drive cumulative excellence instead of pandering the inconsiderate self-seeking mad rush. We need to learn to give away, let it go beyond a point for our peace and larger gains at the collective level.

Joyce Meyer: “If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!”

Self-restraint carries its own type of sensuous luxury. Try it. You will find it better with a less full tummy than a burping, gas infested glutton. Centurions are the ones who are meager eaters, not gluttons. Nature gives signals. If a bit of self-restraint in eating can add decades to one’s age, why cannot restraint in your life's force turn your path into the shady, wooded, luxuriant vales where happiness and love are in abundance? Here you find your soul. There you were definite to lose it. And the biggest loss is not to feel, know and discover one's soul. That is why chronic self-seekers die a miserable, regretful death. They realize what have they missed.

Sharing my friend's message during a metro ride in the morning on her way to office:

“Started my day on a good note by offering my seat to a heavily pregnant woman....she was leaning against the pole and looking so exhausted at the start of the day....such robust young and old men, shameless enough not to even ask whether she would sit...they just pretend not to have seen....such small things tell you to what extent people are selfish for their own comfort....Even other women are so insensitive....looking away so that they don't have to offer a seat....”

Do you find such petty selfishness worth it? I think most of us find it repulsive while reading. Unfortunately, we flow along the tide apathy while we get tested for this in real life.

Believe me, an act born of such loving kindness keeps our day fragrant. Ask those who decided to look the other way. They will need more effort to keep the truth buried under false pride and petty vanity. They will have to divert the gaze from the real self to retain the false ego. 

Well that proves my diagnosis of the commonest of the common Indian trait of petty selfishness. A result of too much of population and forever falling short resources, I suppose. Everything falls short of expectations including metros, buses, roads, jobs, bread, butter, forests, water, land, sky, etc., etc. The list is endless. Overpopulation is one of the biggest social maladies. People just never have enough. It breeds discontentment. A sinister apathy for the cause of fellow sufferers in the crowd creeps in. It narrows the vision. It clogs the spirit. It veritably dehumanizes the collective self. Individuals merely follow the suit.

Caught in the tentacles, you just cannot see beyond the small platform of your own struggle. It breeds very unhealthy personalities. Clinging to their own little grabs is the skill they get versed in over the years in their lives. Then it becomes a very selfish mass, the terrible self-seekers incapable of grasping the civic sense of any cause that lies outside their own.

People get basically so absorbed in their own world that the senses, which allow them to perceive the world around, don't work at all when it comes to their fellow human beings. This attitude is criminally callous. Very unfortunately, we Indians seem to be very tiny hearted. There are hundreds of little incidents daily that prove it more and more.

Herein exists our chance to grab greatness. The mere fact that you decide to come out of the inconsiderate club, and be more sensitive, considerate and loving for a bigger cause, will set you apart, making you an achiever in itself. Come, grab your chance of greatness! Only this much triumph will be carried forward by the karmic DNA of your soul in the journeys next. The mountains of gold will remain on earth to be recycled and claimed for a false sense of victory over the generations.

Desert Palm and Mountain Oak are Great in their Own Ways

 

Every seed carries the potential to be the mightiest, luxuriant-most tree. The powerful force of creation provides the potential for the maximum in seeds and species. Nature doesn’t want it to be a world of half-smiles, half-growths, half-blossoms and half-potential. There is a tendency for fullness. It draws the process of evolution for the maximum.

There is a natural drive for completion, for what we humans call greatness. You, me and all of us are born for greatness. There are seeds of greatness in all of us. And there is no better barometer of evaluating greatness than realizing one’s loving kindness.

A desert seed has the potential to grow in its own way, in harmony and adjustment with the harsh environment. A seed in a lush green rain-forest has its own level of potential as per the rich soil, water and nutritious weather. Does it mean a date palm can never reach the levels of greatness because there is sand, burning temperatures, dry winds and no water? Does it mean that only a mountainous oak has the right to greatness because it has the best climes, abundance of water, cool temperatures and cradling lush green mountains?

A desert palm is great in being the signatory of life in the lifeless sand. It is great in merely surviving. In being there where life has almost no business to be. It is great in standing as a milestone of hope for some lone traveler who might come and rest under the shade for some time and then take the journey onward. It is great in throwing a piece of shade on the burning sands. It is great in showing the light after a long time and prompting the traveler to carry on and reach out to the oasis full of life. It’s a major link in the chain of hope.

Like desert palm you might be born in the poorest of poor conditions. But that doesn’t mean you are not born with the potential to be the greatest. You are! Just that your greatness is different from the mountain oak and the people lucky enough to be born in somewhat better circumstances. Greatness shouldn’t be compared. When we do, we just cannot appreciate the worth of our journey.

We are born in the predetermined soil of our destiny. We have our own individual destinies. Destinies are but not bigger or smaller. They are just about realization of the full potential one is born with. Nature is kind enough to give us the maximum potential to grow as per the conditions.

A desert palm can be a mighty achiever and feel proud if it doesn’t compare itself with the mountain oak.

Strive hard, rake up the soil of your situations, nourish it with the moisture of your sweat and actualize the potential you are born with. And be great in your own way. Don’t compare your greatness with anyone around. Instead of comparing the tiny size of your prominence with the tall structures of success around, look at your own growth from the dusted toughness around the place where you took hold and rooted yourself to grow.

You might be happier in tough situations with lesser growth than unhappy people with taller growths in best soils. The moment you realize you have sucked out all the potential that was given to you since birth to grow and survive, you acknowledge the progress you have made. A proud feeling sinks in and you can’t help smiling.

So isn’t it natural that the date palm can be happier than the mountain oak? 

Need not retell that such genuine happiness is a fertile ground for the seed of your compassionate self to sprout forth in full luxury.

Barge through the Traps of Self-annihilation

 You must be really happy. You take pride in the fact that you don’t smoke, don’t drink, exercise daily and keep up the best diet plan. So everything is supposed to be OK on the health front. O wait! You may still be ingesting toxins into your body, suffering slow poisoning stretched over a period of years.

Long after the symptoms become visible, quite ironically, the thing responsible might still stand unaccused, putting blame on more tangible things like lifestyle, diet, pollution, biological accident, etc., etc. It’s better to know this unseen source of suffering. It’s the uncontrolled mind. It’s as potent a risk factor as any other visible agent of ill health like smoking, drinking, imbalanced lifestyle or accidents. To make it really dangerous, it directly obstructs the emergence of real compassionate you on the stage of worldly affairs. Its turbulent waves disturbing the surface like wind tosses the pond waters on a full moon night thus breaking the moon’s full reflection. You see broken pieces of its beauty scattered over the surface.

The consequences of an uncontrolled mind are no accident. This self-destruction takes a long and winding route to its destination. The spin-outs of an uncontrolled mind—hate, anger, greed, jealousy, impulsiveness, anxiety, worries, illusions and false assumptions—are as bad for our body as they are for the social life we lead. Although not advisable to say this, but I would prefer to be an alcoholic or smoker than having an untamed mind. An unkempt mind fluxes toxins into our blood stream, corroding the basic principles of self-preservation. It’s unnatural.

What is mind? It’s just the operational aspect of our brain. So we have to put up the operations in order. The brain will save you from becoming a self-destroyer. Long before there is any outside enemy, we have to spot the enemy inside, i.e., the treacherous trait of being utterly irresponsible towards our mind. That is the real enemy. It stops you from loving your own self primarily. After that the talk of loving kindness for others remains an unachievable hypothesis. So put the runaway mind in order. The outer world is a mere reflection of the invisible world inside. Hold the reins of your mind firmly and you become the master of your destiny.

The challenge lies not in trying to control the external environment. The real task lies in managing the mind. Isn’t it sheer folly that the thing that keeps the potential to limitless happiness is allowed to go out of loop and spin into a chaotic trajectory where it releases poison into our organs?

We spend literally 24 hours to control the external things in life and hardly anyone tries to control the ticking time-bomb of our doom inside. The fire that is supposed to power us to excellence is hardly managed. No wonder it becomes the pyre of self-annihilation. You fight so hard to manage the worldly affairs. And you hardly care about the management of the world inside you. The guiding flicker of life, the patronizing beam having limitless potential to infinite happiness, goes out of control and becomes a wild fire. A fire out of control is destructive. It’s useful as long as it’s managed. The mind is like that fire. Tend it. Manage it. Keep an eye on it. And you will have its life-giving warmth and path-showing light for you.

It doesn’t take too much of an effort. It’s nothing in comparison to the huge effort you put in managing the world outside. It doesn’t need your sweat and blood of worldly battles. It just needs half an hour of quiet contemplation, the time even less than you might spend in thinking about your enemies out there and visualize doom and destruction to them.

All it needs from you is to stop running, close eyes, put up a smile on your lips, look inwards, feel your breathing and walk silently to your real self. The closer you reach that core, the foundation of your real self, healthier you become in mind and body. The better the inner world, the better still will be the external circumstances related to you.

Inhale peace and tranquility. Douse the ravaging fire. Turn it into a soulful bonfire and you like a fatigued traveler basking in healing warmth and peace by its side while the snowy blizzards hit around. Dive deep. Leave the turbulent and disturbed surface and move towards the unmoving bottom. You will discover the futility of just wasting life in the storms on the surface.

Once you come out on the surface after the deep contemplative dive, the world outside will not be the scary choppy sea of earlier. It will be a playground of excitement. Life will be fun. Struggles will become just a sport to be enjoyed. Life turns into an enjoyable game instead of an agonizing struggle.

All it needs is just a daily dose for the mind. Some quiet moments when you leave the visible and go into the embrace of the invisible. When you go into the source of your creation and emerge almost reborn. With loads of love, of course.