by Manjit Handa, PhD
My good friend was crabby and her invariable mockery about how people were generally selfish and turned a blind eye to the need of people around them or the world-at-large, set me thinking. It was obvious that her bitterness was a result of some ungrateful behavior she had recently suffered from an acquaintance.
While I was trying to make sense of her Hobbesian viewpoint where “every man is against every man”, I was also trying to see through the eyes of such people as were branded selfish.
Was it some kind of genetic makeup that rendered some people more aware of others’ suffering or was it sheer upbringing and the environment that pushed some and vice versa. Sometimes, I think, others’ suffering does not hit us as profound because either we are an absolute alien to it or because having undergone something similar, it no longer held the same gravity as it did for us the first time.
For an infant, a transition to be able to walk is a big thing, for an adult, it is a given. More specifically, it is a delight, when your kid begins to walk and once he is grown up the same thing is not a matter of profound pleasure, at least not as much. It might rev up the joy of parenthood but beyond that there is an impenetrable numbness.
Coming back to my friend’s banter, I think she was right, to a certain extent. If only we could look through the eyes of the people around us or at least paid heed to what he/she was saying, it would make all the positive difference. Our feeling might have gone old but all it takes is a bit of imagination to be the other person or simply borrow the pair of shoes the other is wearing to get a feel of it.
Getting into one such pair,
Yours, Manjit
