Lend a helping hand! Some luggage are tough to carry and
helping hand makes life so much easier…. So went the classic Hindi lyric
featured in the 1957 movie ‘Naya Daur’. The movie focus was not relationships
but nation building – a common motif in the 1950s and 1960s – early days of
independent India, but this theme could work for relationships as well.
By the time you are 30, you would have had your fair share
of emotional baggage from various life experiences. Some carry a light case while
others have heavy baggage containing issues from unhappy childhood as well. In
a society which is moving towards low attention span as well as low emotional
capacity, which means, people are more willing to break away from relationships
than deal with partners’ emotional baggage. It’s like we are constantly
evaluating our partners, friends and people around us and a slightest chink in
the armor is enough for us to walk out of our relationships (romantic or
otherwise). I have myself been aware of close friends (from my college circle)
not keeping in touch as one of them is going through hard times and other feels
these hardships have turned him needy and it’s difficult to have a conversation
with him. I remember feeling the same...
whenever we get together; this individual would bring up the topic about his
hard times and would mope about it. We would feel terrible about it, almost
guilty that we are having a good time with our life; but then we would try to
cheer him up and take him clubbing. For those few hours every month or once in
two months, he would have fun and forget all about his problems. We don’t claim
we were doing him a favor, because for us he was still the 17 year old kid from
college we used to hang out with. Our regular meets and reminiscing about
college days were acting like stress valve to our friend - useful to blow some
steam and get back to facing life with new vigor.
Make no mistake, we all have had our fair share of
misfortunes / bad phases / family tragedy and / or financial problems when we
have found it difficult to cope up and even more difficult to face our friends.
You see, what we don’t realize is that the most difficult thing in this world
is to show your vulnerability to others. Mostly, people end up insulating
themselves from friends and family and try to fight the bad times alone. Add to
that, the burden of selfish individuals around us who feel they are doing a
favor by even listening to our problems, leave alone helping us solve them.
This cocktail is hazardous and toxic. It triggers a viscous cycle of depression
that does not end well. In the end, they are not asking for much, just a
friendly ear. It’s a blessed feeling to be able to help someone and one must
thank the individual for opening up about their problems to us rather than
avoid them thinking talking to them drags down our spirits. It might seem
fantastic, but each one of us has done this to someone close to us at some
point of time or other- knowingly or unknowingly. I myself have done this to my
own mother – something I will never stop thinking about or have never
forgotten. This keeps me aware of such situations festering around myself and
where ever possible, I try to be of some help. Maybe, in the end it will make
up for the mistakes I made earlier. That is my baggage.
Getting back to the topic, now that we are aware of
emotional baggage of people surrounding us, what we normally don’t understand
is that we ourselves have substantial baggage of our own. In some cases enough
to put off people around us. We do not realize it mostly because we don’t hear
ourselves talk. Like we critically evaluate every new person we meet to catch
the trigger words that point to possible emotional baggage, I wish we took time
to take one hard look at ourselves and things we speak and how it comes off on
others so that we realize, we are no different. If we still wish people around
us should not desert us due to our emotional baggage, we must extend that
benefit people around us as well.
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