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The other day I was talking to my friend. It was not the usual day! While in my best effort to give her some sympathy and console, I was witnessing all the emotional suffering she was dealing with. My friend lost her father! She was here, thousands of miles away from her hometown, when she got the devastating news. At the very moment of receiving the news, she packed her bags and rushed to the airport. She had visited her father just two weeks back as he was not keeping up with his health. She had done everything in her capacity, but she never imagined this to happen! Who does? No one, of course! That day, she was undoubtedly dealing with the worst nightmare of her life. Like us all, she also thought, her father had more time! But I guess one thing is certain: Life is uncertain! Life always has a mysterious way of shocking us, reminding us that we can’t always control what happens!

After hearing the shattering news, despite being a wonderful kid, she started cursing herself for not being there when her father was counting his last breath! All she was thinking was why was she not there? She might have been helpful! She might be able to save him!

Her feelings were overpowering. Thousands of high emotions were hijacking her mind. Shocked by the news, she was trying to accept the bitter truth, lamenting, cursing, mad at herself for not being there, missing her father like anything, and amid all this she was desperately looking for options to reach her hometown as early as possible. She wanted to be there for all the funerary rituals. She wanted to see her father one last time! One final bye!

From home to the airport, her family members, her friends, and everyone searched everywhere on the internet, trying to find the earliest flight for her. They called a couple of travel and airline companies.  From each of them, they got the same response, “Sorry, you are late, all our fights are full!”  Despite her being able to see a couple of available seats online, all the airlines rejected her request saying it was too late to accommodate. She was told that the online information might be stale. They couldn’t do anything about it.

She reached the airport and asked the airline. As this was an emergency, she asked them if it would be possible to make exceptions for her and look for any available options. They also rejected her request. They didn’t consider this an emergency. In their response, “We are following the process ma’am. We don’t have any seats available. We are sorry!” They did not consider this an emergency! They were too busy to look for any options for her.

It was sad but there was no empathy, compassion, or consideration. “We are following the process…” and “We are sorry…”  When I look at these statements, somehow it gives me the feeling that one of the AI tools is talking whose job is to follow a few lines of code, who doesn’t have feelings or emotions to understand someone else’s feelings and state of mind! It doesn’t know the difference between emergencies and regular situations as it’s probably not defined in its source code! Most likely it’s also unaware of what kind of situations should be qualified to make exceptions in its process. Empathy to it might be a word from the dictionary. If we ask the meaning of it, surely, we will receive the word-by-word definition! But it is unaware of the true sense of empathy, let alone practicing that!

As a result of this situation, my friend had to come back and wait for the entire day to catch the flight. She reached her hometown a day after her father’s funerary rituals were done!

This whole tragic experience was unfortunate and sorrowful. I can’t imagine the emotional state of my friend when she had to go through additional suffering on top of her grievous loss!!! Her agony must have been unbearable and the void of her father in her life is irreplaceable!

The thing that’s troubling me unendurably is as humans what we did to her! We all could have helped! She could have reached her hometown on time and given a final bye to her father. She could have seen her father one last time! I wasn’t satisfied with those unempathetic responses. Certainly, there are chances that by no means, she could have reached her hometown on time by any flight. But not even trying to find options for her is beyond my understanding!

My mind had not rested ever since I heard about her experience. I kept on thinking is there any way we can have a more empathetic culture around us?

We all have experienced a lot of changes throughout our life span socially, and globally.  If I look for examples of global cultural shifts, several examples come to my mind.  Undoubtedly within the last decade, there have been tremendous positive changes. Positive parenting style is one of the key changes.  We are more aware of social issues, gender equality, social justice, etc. There is an indubitable boom in technology and communication! So many examples are in front of us, we all witnessed the decade shift together!

In addition to all the above and many more changes, we have developed more involvement within ourselves. I am afraid but in addition to the technological boom I also am seeing the boom in being conscious about social appearances in this era!

Looking at ourselves through the lenses of others; conscious of what others would think of us and then spending some self-time on our appearances and defining that as a self-care – I feel that somewhere we might be interchanging these two very different terms: self-absorption and self-love! Loving the self is vital. And to be honest, a high sense of self-love can even help us build a more compassionate, empathetic, healthy, loving, caring, supporting, and understanding society. Surely, we all know that we should invest our time in taking care of ourselves and we should have a sense of self-awareness, self-esteem, self-care, self-value, and self-worth. But I wonder if we really do understand the true meaning of these vital qualities, the important aspects of self-love! Or are we confused – mistaken that self-absorption is self-love?

Self-love is never about appearances and looks. It is not about how we should present ourselves! and spending hours and hours “rectifying that look” to the scale of “perfection”.  Arrogance, anger, and taking care in this way are sadly driven by the fear underneath – fear of social unacceptance. The very fear that keeps us away from the true beauty of ourselves and says, “If I don’t do all this, what would people think!”

Loving the self is much deeper. One of its key components is self-awareness – having a profound understanding and true acceptance of ourselves. Honestly, it is mostly us who don’t accept our true selves! We keep measuring ourselves to the scale of fat, thin, beautiful, tall, short, and whatnot! When we don’t accept ourselves, it results in frustrations, unhappiness, and anger! We try everything to “fix” those so-called imperfections in us! If we get a success, we feel accomplished, but soon, we find some other imperfection in us! If we don’t get success, we end up getting frustrated, angry, and unhappy. These feelings rise to another level if someone else points out those so-called “imperfections”. It is not them, mostly it is our own frustrations, when we, ourselves are not accepting ourselves, how do we expect others to do so?

On the other hand, when we accept ourselves as it is, we start loving ourselves unconditionally. When we do so, it won’t affect what people think.

Self-love teaches us how to be respectful to ourselves, and be grateful for who we are, no matter how we are. When we love ourselves, we become kind, compassionate, and respectful to ourselves. We start appreciating the goodness all around us. We develop to empathize with ourselves and also with the people around us. We meaningfully appreciate the living. We live every moment intentionally.

Self-love also helps develop a high sense of self-worth. Having a sense of self-worth, we value ourselves and do not sacrifice ourselves to please someone. When a relationship is maintained by pleasing someone, it not only keeps our self-value at stake but also creates an untruthful and unhealthy bond between the two.  It would eventually lead to frustration and anger.

Whereas being self-absorbed we get indulged in ourselves and forget about the rest of the world around us! Isn’t that a selfish act? How do we expect the feelings of empathy, helping each other, care, compassion, and kindness to naturally develop with that mindset?

The beauty of self-love is that it can help us become more empathetic, understanding, compassionate, respectful, and caring humans.  When we start respecting ourselves and loving ourselves, we can eventually be kind to others, we can see goodness all around us. It definitely can lead a path to a positive, empathetic, kind, and compassionate world!

And then, I think someone would probably be there to help and find options, and solutions compassionately, and wholeheartedly for a person in need – like my friend needed the other night!

Love the self! Love others!

Thanks

Mridulika