DejaVu: Empathy!! (Thursday, June 29, 2006)

One of those nice words, that I like in English! "Empathy", word which says so much,.....well at least to me. Putting oneself into another's position. Putting your foot in another's shoe!

I was watching a French movie (name was something RED). European movies are quite nice, a different world from the American movies! Anyway, in it there is this psychopath retired judge, whose neighbours did not like him, and once a while one of the neighbours would throw a stone at his house. Peacefully he was collecting all the stones, ....there were six of them till that day. He was saying to his friend, "I think they must be hating me like anything. I am sure I would have done the same at their place". His friend gets surprised and asks, "you would have thrown stones??". He answered, "Its so natural; given those conditions, anyone would have behaved exactly the same!".

What we call as ourself, our morales, our principles, none of them actually belong to us. We have picked them up in our journey called life. We are bad or good, its as much natural. Philosophers sometime say, its natural to be happy. Its our nature to be "Anand". Then why are we not? Are "WE", different from nature?

If someone is bad its natural, if someone is good, its equally natural. Put yourself in his/her shoes, you can not become anything else! So where is the reason to be happy that I am good or to be sorry that I am bad (or have bad feelings)?

Bug, society and individual

Just now I was having coffee in a languid lonely coffee corner and marked a big-bug steadily progressing towards me! I am eternally scared of bugs, especially because of the way they walk! My first reaction was to smash it :) But I controlled my flooding temptation and just marked it scrolling on. It was more like a six-legged Mars-rover, moving on and on and on. It has hardly any memory. Hence it cant learn from its past failures. It just moves on. I put an obstacle on its way, it tried a lot and finally changed its course. Not that it was in a course, it was just moving and now it moved in another direction. May be life is like that? We just need to keep on moving, adapting and changing. Then end of the day we have moved a lot! Not that it makes us any achiever or loser. Just that we have moved a lot.

Then I tried to think like the bug! For it there is no past no future... may be no present. Its not bothered about what others will say. Its not bothered about what will happen. It just moves on thinking of its own self and its own immediate surrounding! Then I realised that the reason of all pain and emotional problems for we human-beings is society! If for once we can truely forget the "others" and just keep crawling, then it will give rise to a much steadier and much smoother flow. And that will end all our goals, aspiration, aims etc. etc. I think this is true individualism. A man staying in society or in forest or in hills; keeping on moving and discovering news things all the time... May be this is what they call being like a lotus leaf (staying in water and yet not getting wet). Hmmmm... I am yet to experiment doing this...