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Credit: DH Illustration
We live in an increasingly divided world lacking harmony for the most part. Every day someone or other comes up with newer ways of boxing people in the world and setting them up against each other.
Does this do any good at all? Thankfully at the same time there are several heartwarming instances of people reaching out to another when in a crisis without second thoughts.
The natural instinct of most human beings is to help or at least try to help. And when we are in a situation where family and friends are not around, we are willing to accept help from rank strangers regardless of their station in life, community, etc. When an elderly family member who had gone for a walk just outside the house some years ago had a spell of disorientation and started bounding down the road perceiving some imaginary danger, it was the neighbourhood vegetable vendor who lifted him up when he saw that he had fallen flat and brought him home. Our gratitude knew no bounds.
No man is an island, wrote John Donne. We all need each other and are interdependent. The farmer who grows our crops, the factory worker who makes our clothes, the cab driver who takes one to one’s destination or the trained nurse who cares for a senior in the family -are important players on our lives Do differences even strike us in this scenario?
As long as we are agreed on basic things- the need to work hard, make an honest living and not harm fellow human beings, respecting another’s faith and customs etc there is a good chance that we can live in harmony with a little effort.
It is of course not possible to agree with everyone on everything all the time- even one’s own family members. Respecting another’s views even if diametrically opposite, agreeing to disagree in an open, honest, hate- free atmosphere and engaging in a dialogue civilly will prevent deepening of rifts. When we are set in our views and don’t acknowledge that there could be a different point of view, disharmony is bound to follow.
As the preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO says, “Since wars begin in the minds of men it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.“ Shouldn’t we begin doing that now?