Let us be slower to become friend and thus life will be easy…
We are very busy and always rushing to get something. We are not engaging with life and reaching to appreciate things around us. We need our narrow –prejudiced proud groups to paint our identity and are delighted to invest more time in virtual social networks and professional affiliations rather than in real people having flesh and blood. What is this happening around us? We these days don’t believe in real conversation but merely are satisfied by superficial, hypocritical meetings otherwise would not be possible because we found someone we know at railway station or at the crossroads.
Is it so important topic to discuss, you will ask. Well, yes and no. If you are well proven in your biography to maintain and sustain the responsive, empathetic feedback to your friendship then certainly this will come as a surprising appeal or advice. But, mind well. It is much more than that. Here we mean friendship, not by compulsion pragmatic sense of selfishness. Rather than it is realizing that our life is other-centric and we are immersed in the aspirations and respirations of the people on which we are dependent and communities which help us to live.
When we discuss democracy, we discuss citizen rights, government`s welfare programs and the civil society which tries to bridge the gaps of performance continues to exist in three arms of democracy i.e. legislative, executive and judiciary. The notion of friendship is extended towards efforts and instruments to build solidarity, to exchange grief and painful experiences, initiate to express your sincere acknowledgement of the challenges faced by people around and wishing them good. Going beyond it comes to engaging people in small, small things. Discussing daily issues which may be very trivial and ordinary from the perspectives of ideals of friendship which ‘expects’ rather than ‘gives.’ This spirit of bringing our own hand to say hello, to touch and console the other person, to wish to congratulate about their hard work and asking for a cup of tea is worth living for.
So going beyond law, welfare schemes and democratic rights how we can ensure that people around us who suffer are enabled by this friendship rather than always running towards courts, politics and other institutions which otherwise are not successful in addressing the small problems, let alone bigger problems. Friendship is like seamless web. It does not solidify itself in compartments, narrow boundaries and divisions. It surpasses every possible mechanism of segregation and exclusion. Then friendship becomes a very flexible, comfortable axis through which discuss, debate and even fight over ideas, principles and our perspectives.
This has become the bridge through which peers share the business, research ideas. This is the channel through which water of our concerns and responsiveness flow thus enabling communities to share their legitimate grieves. In the age of accelerated conflagration of news and emotions through mass media and technological instruments we have forgotten to seat down, share a tea, think and converse with minimum trust with the person in front of us. This leads to more and more secrecy, confusion, suspicion, rumors, distrust and hatred. So, where are going from here? Humble friendship is the soul harbinger of initiating the kind of environment we wish to build around efforts to bring peace and prosperity in life.
So, let’s go for tea and have chat !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
