Everyone You Meet Is Struggling With Something, So Please Be Kind

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I am a fifth year law student in Bangalore and at present I haven’t achieved anything to make my words count. There is something that angered me so much that I really wanted to blurt this out.

I went to a really small restaurant for lunch. There were a couple of students in the table right next to mine talking too loudly for me to ignore their conversation. The conversation went on from fancy phones to houses that they own. It was okay until the person who was billing us heard them say that the place was as bad and small as a photocopy shop.

It might not sound like a really big problem because most of us are in a habit of criticizing or appreciating the food places we go to. But here’s a really small plea I have and have been wanting to convey for a long time now.

It is okay for you to feel happy and flaunt about the amount of money you have and also feel fortunate because you can express the same in English. But this is not the purpose of education. Please know that you are blessed to be educated and the purpose of education is not restricted to holidaying in foreign countries, traveling in business class and making more money. There is more to it. Education should enable you, should give you the power to see the reality. Walk away from the fancy little world of your own, look at the poor and the unfortunate.

You should be more empathetic and compassionate than the ones who don’t get to study in a big-shot private school. Let yourself be aware of your surroundings. Trust me, you don’t need more yoga classes or courses to realize what is going wrong in the world. Please stop concentrating on your break-ups and alcohol and do something that can may be not change but at least help someone become better.

How cold can we really become after all. I want to request the mankind to please start feeling. Feel for the poor, feel for the pavement dwellers, feel for the kids begging to you. I feel fortunate to have received the best education I could but times like these I feel so helpless when people my age don’t feel anyone’s pain or need. It is sad to see that people who can understand world economy, laws, politics and a lot more are disabled when it comes to understand their fellow humans. Stop judging an introvert or an extrovert. The number of relationships or drinks they have does not make anyone a bad person. In fact, having more than one sexual partner does not define them.

What are we even doing? It is so disheartening to hear the most vulgar of gossips about other people. Some of us have even found ourselves capable to talk about someone’s breast size, shabby clothes, the cheap phones people carry. You make friends according to the beauty scale of a person. It’s about time we stopped living a plastic life. Everyone has a trouble that you know nothing about. We should be ashamed of who we have become. If this is what education does to people, let us all stay illiterate.

It’s a request I am making. If each one of you can reflect back to your lives for ten minutes and see what monsters we are becoming, you might want to change this about yourself. Let us change the definition of being literate to being more compassionate towards our fellow beings. Let us give a helping hand in need and take pride in flaunting that!