Akangjungla
Human beings cherish and value things which make for richness of experience. Everyone is hurting and facing some kind of challenges in the given moment of time. Without leaving out any person, life offers the ache and hurt caused by the loss of a loved one to the fate of death, sickness, broken relationships and any other such tragedies. Engaging with the idea of pain is not new. It is part of being human and while facing such circumstances, the experience is more intense, traumatising and harder for some. There is no single perspective or answer to how these experiences add value and relevance to being human. While the whole world looked busy during the Christmas week, many families have passed the season grieving and mourning the losses of loved ones. Events of losses would not usually count as topics or issues necessary or worthy of an editorial space, except when it has the ratio to make a national or international impact. Conversely, losing the empathy and compassion towards events of losses that take away something which is not replaceable, indicates a bigger problem among the humankind. It would mean the culmination of deconstructing the very values on which the universe and humanity hopes to stand for.
The early humans including our forefathers hold reverence in every relationship they developed and built around them. To early humans, paying attention to the collective was a central part of their reality and functioning as a community was fundamental to their existence. In times of both celebration and despair, they listened and shared with the neighbours and the communities, thus, nurturing a safe space to love, forgive, hope, reconcile and show mercy to each other. They equated all incidences and experiences to strengthen friendship and relationship. It was a natural ability in them to support and stimulate new empathy each time they faced an event of loss or misery. The limit of their understanding and empathy went beyond retaining any kind of pride, status or dignity. Our forefathers believed in finding the meaning and purpose needed to make life significant for those around them.
To find this kind of reverence and sense of community living would be rare in the present day. It is possible that the shift occurred when the fast growing society decided to exchange paying attention to oneself, than to the needs of the other. In seeking the ‘self’, the process has resulted in deconstructing the meanings and purposes of human empathy, which once thought to be valuable and positive, to isolation and separation. The visible longing for identification with certain groups, trends and ideas mirrors evidence of detrimental human connections. Even so, appreciating the positive cultures and practices of our forefathers offer hope, and allows the contemporary generation to have a dream to restore empathy, love and companionship. And eventually, this dream for real human connection will confront and deal with the accumulating losses of lives and relations, and also find a new way of seeing ourselves that allows us to be more kind with ourselves and to others. As author and professor Brené Brown, writes, “Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’”
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