**
We might believe that we have broadened our views on everything under the sun. But the more I go out and meet people, I learn how gleefully we bask in our own delusions. The more number of open conversations that I have, I realise how much we lag behind. From all the good and the not-so-good folks I have met, I understand that humans don’t try hard to be empathetic for we are incorrigibly obsessed with our own problems. In this world, where being ruthlessly competitive and self-centered are qualities to be hailed, perhaps, it’s too idealistic of me to expect empathy to be considered a virtue. Although I’m sane enough to recognise that every human being is bogged down by myriad challenges, is it too much to ask for people to make a genuine effort to listen, respond?
**
One of my pets was severely ill and I walked up to my boss to request permission to leave early. With his eyes fixed on his computer monitor, he said, “You finish your work and then leave!” Quite expectedly, he didn’t turn to see what my reaction was. I didn’t expect him to empty his Kleenex box nor did I want him to let me go without posing another question. All that I wanted from him were two ears that could take in information. For a girl, who made ends meet with the peanuts being doled out by those multinationals, I feared leaving work without completing my tasks, although I wanted to be with my furbaby. For him it was just a dog. But to me, he was my sibling.
**
Just another simple example of how people love living in their islands and sever real communicatio. We are losing the skills to exchanges words, in the real sense. The kind of conversations that we have these days are futile. Our dialogues aren’t really dialogues. Our exchanges have become lifeless and are mostly infested with ‘I’ and ‘my’. If our discussions are filled with songs about ourselves, then it is needless to mention that we have lost out on humility too. Despite spending massive amount of time on social networking websites, where we chat away to glory, where we are bombarded with information, where we are constantly exchanging and expressing views, where we learn some of our crucial life lessons, it looks like we haven’t begun to learn the art of conversation and being empathetic for we haven’t learned that our ROFL, HMMM and LOL don’t work offline. In times like these, when I struggle to cope with the ‘I’ that is thrown at me (no offence to Ayn Rand), I think of what Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird – “Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.”
**
While we are constantly making friends (virtual and real), we must also realise that there are a lot of tiny, beautiful things that help us to form friendships. Although those elements seem trivial, they are complex enough to sabotage harmony. Building a healthy relationship is not as simple as ‘liking’ or writing comforting comments on Facebook, but it is also about learning to be tactful and well disposed.
Deepika Ramesh-Thirugnanasambandam lives in Chennai with her husband, parents, a canine brother and a canine daughter. She works as a journalist during the day to pay bills, buy treats for her fur babies and dreams full time to nourish her soul. She reads because it is the easiest route to escape from reality and she writes because she likes helping others escape too. As she firmly believes that ‘Man is just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur’ (Thanks Ayn Rand), she chooses to love, smile, hate, read, write, help and see life pass by. She blogs at http://doubtfulwriter.blogspot.in/