Imagine you and the person you are crossing a busy road with, are both blindfolded. Just think about it, will you two ever be able to cross the road safely?
Well, the answer to this question is a big NO.
In every walk of life, we want to be around people who are like us be it at our workplaces or at any other sector for that matter. Because we are too scared to be rejected, for not being like others or we reject some people for not being like us. So, we choose an easy option, we choose the people who we think are like us, so as to avoid the effort of knowing or understanding someone new or say a little different.
Whether you believe in the theories of physics or some mythology, each and everything says that we all are a part of a whole, yet different from each other and that is the beauty of life.
We often forget that we all are originated from a single source but the time of origination for each one of us is different, hence in spite of having same grounds we stand at different places. We think we know people, hence we choose them for ourselves, to be our friends, spouse or anything, depending upon the similarity of interest we share in life.
But wait, do you really think that’s enough?
Each and every cell of our body is continuously dying and regenerating, we as physical beings are not the very same as we were a few seconds back, then expecting people to remain the same, is a mistake. A mistake that I think, we all tend to make.
People fall in love with each other, they marry and when the real-life hits and big promises made in the past and actions in present arent put well together, beautiful relationships fall apart.
Sad but true!
The biggest problem is that we are entrapped in a circle, we do not let our mind to think out of the circle, hence the time of our life which was supposed to be spent beautifully, we ruin it in keeping grudges or complaints.
There is this beautiful quote by Audre Lorde which says “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
A few days back I saw an old lady, who is a garbage collector, outside my house, with her little 4 or 5-year-old granddaughter. I saw them sitting under the shade of the tree, the little girl snuggling and playing around with her grandmother, extremely cheerful that her laughter melted my heart every time she laughed and she was holding a broken doll which she probably found in the garbage.
I saw that and wanted to rush into my room, take out my beautiful doll and give it to her but then something stopped me.
At that point I realized, a neat, fixed doll is something that would make me happy but to that little girl, a doll which was little broken was her source of happiness. So who am I to change that criterion for her?
Isn’t it more beautiful that this little girl is able to seek happiness out of something, I can’t even imagine of.
Who’s criteria of happiness is right? Mine or hers??
I guess we both are neither right nor wrong, we are just different people, who happened to have different lives and celebrating our lives in our ways is the righteous thing to do, keeping kindness and compassion in the heart.
In a similar way, every person we ever come across or have in our life is like us, they feel happy or sad about the same things but our threshold to feel happiness or sadness in the same situations is different because our parameters are different.
For example, we all love receiving gifts but for some, the idea of receiving handmade gifts is overwhelming and some people love materialistic things.
The things that can make me happy might not make you happy and same is the case with sadness.
But it doesn’t give anyone of us any right to be inconsiderate towards the emotions of others and say “I’m different or I’m this way, deal with it”
No. This is certainly not right.
We are humans, understand it for a fact that our parameters of happiness or sadness or any emotion, might be different than the other but understanding and respecting the different dimensions of the person makes us most human.
In the beginning, I asked you to imagine being blindfolded and crossing the road with another blindfolded person, the whole idea of it was to make you understand that to move forward in life, to keep a good balance, we will need people. People who are different from us, who can see this life differently than us. So we might reach a destination, the road to which was never clearly visible to us.
We all need each other in this life, no matter what is our purpose.
We need to understand that more than our judgment, this world needs compassion, love and understanding for each other. Believe that there is nothing right, nothing wrong, we are just different from each other and we need to celebrate this difference.
You are the sand of the mighty sea,
You are incomplete without it,
It is incomplete without thee.
Keep walking, taking everyone along,
They might give you words,
And you might turn it into a song.
Stop fitting your thoughts into the parameter of right or wrong;
Let compassion be within you in this journey all along!