Empathy

Empathy - Magic bullet to cure all problems !

Is that an eye-catching title ? Or more like a silly way to catch attention to something like a sale ? Never mind ! :) As a Mom  of a school going child .. one thinks perennially about schooling / classes / tuition / education system / school boards / subjects and the like.

And while there are so many things one learns in school and so many things that get 'unlearnt' - like the joy of learning while pursuing marks - I feel that if there is one thing that I could add to the syllabus - I would add the teaching and learning of empathy.

Now this does not sound very earth shaking does it ? But it would bring about a paradigm shift in the thinking process and the way life itself is handled.

Why empathy ?

• For one thing is is not wishy-washy like sympathy.
• Secondly it involves some amount of imagination and courage. It makes us go beyond ourselves and into the shoes of the person across whom we are sitting.
• It is more than conscience too.
• It is not connected with religion at all. So no dogmas need follow.

Yes all other moral values like - honesty, compassion, discipline, contentment ( vs avarice ), industriousness , respect for others etc are good but I would think empathy is at the root of all these values.

Think about it -

• If the creator of the Ponzi scheme was empathetic - he may not have ended up looting the life savings of so many old retired people. He/She would have understood the devastation that loss would bring about.
• Domestic violence would not be an issue b'cos the person involved would understand the physical and mental pain the victim would feel.
• Women complaining about the glass ceiling and discrepancy in wages for the same work would be heard with an open mind.
• Dowry deaths especially the heinous burning would be a thing of the past.
• We would perhaps switch to "Ahimsa Silk" so as to not kill the millions of silk worms for our usage. Ditto with animal furs...
• Child Abuse would make the person feel so abhorrent that it would not come to play at all ....
• Human trafficking - what is that ? :)
• We would have fire escapes that work, more water works in villages where women have to go miles for water, roads that don't vanish in monsoons, teenagers who think it is great to weave around aging trucks with no power steering more circumspect.
• Who would there be to teach a guy to walk into a railway station and fire bullets into unsuspecting people ?
• Nobody would wake up after an operation with a wrong missing body part.

... And so on ......

Empathy -  would lead to being more responsible. More open to negotiations. Not just expecting without taking responsibility. Ameliorating problematic situations. It would make us better humans. And therein lies the crux.

Writing and Musing ...

It has been a long gap. I have not taken time to write a blog post for eons. It is definitely not b'cos I lack ideas but sometimes ideas are like butterflies - hard to pin down. And who in their right mind would want to pin down butterflies ? :)

I have this habit of of jotting my ideas everywhere ! On little bits of paper , mostly from old envelopes or pamphlets that come inside the newspaper - just my little bit to help reduce paper wastage. Or on my textbook wrappers :) Of course the problem is once I finish reading that textbook - the ideas go along with the textbook wrapper ! :)

I can already hear the clamor - get Evernote already ! And I do have Evernote on my phone - but I get so damn tired to typing on my phone ! Whether it is the 3*9 keyboard format or the regular typing keypad - I think typing on a phone is really terrible. I am a 10-finger typist - so typing on a laptop or scribbling on a piece of paper is any-day preferable to inputting on the phone. Again there is of course an answer to that - I could use the typepad that can take in my handwriting ! Or the speech to note option .. see ?? Guess I just prefer to scribble on bits of paper ! :) To this - I can always have a mini-notepad handy ! I do manage to keep the most important pieces in my drawer , which is a jumble of dusty odds and ends.

The way I look at this simple chaos is - If the same topic keeps knocking on my brain many times , it takes shape almost unconsciously writes itself. So that topic has to make through the first pass from just a few thoughts floating around my brain in a vague way to something concrete that generates a mind map ! Lately I find that many topics have died under this discern barrier that I maintain and so to some extent while I classify my blog as a slow-blog -I think I will allow some amount of spontaneity to creep in too. [ Now how is that for impulse? ] Not all mind maps are created equal so while some topics do touch a chord, many do not ! That is a risk one takes.

I also feel the need to be in the mood to write ! :) From the time I remember I have been writing ( hey no giving my brick bats for the quality of my writing ... I know there are vast areas for improvement ) stories while in school, diaries and I maintained many .... and letters .. I was a mean letter writer. I used to send pages and pages to my penpals .. who were prolific writers themselves ... 20-26 pages per letter was the norm ! And when whittled down to the serious writers, I had about 20 pen pals with whom I corresponded regularly through out my college days. :) It got to a stage where I started using tissue-thin onion paper to write since paying for the postage of those thick volumes was becoming too much for my student budget ! :)

Getting back to this post - I am writing as I am thinking ! Something I used to do more often before and now do so mainly when replying to mails of friends. The downside of this are many but I am not going to get into that - otherwise this post will never be published ! :)