Ask Youself Before You Ask the Other

Empathise!

When I first heard this term from a friend of mine, I didn't know its meaning (yeah now I realise why he is an MBA from IIM and I am not). It is one of the few terms which I cared to look up in the dictionary, and since then it has become one of my best friends (the word, not the dictionary).

Some definitions that I found on the net:

Princeton - be understanding of

Wikipedia - capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion

PublicBookShelf - The ability and capacity to fully understand and experience another's thoughts, circumstances and/or feelings

But what definition I apply to it is - Putting yourself in someone else's shoes

As i mentioned above, its one of the best things that ever happened to me, it has helped me realise that things are not always how they seem to you, there is always another side of the story that you ought to listen to. There are inferences that we all make looking at another person's behaviour, but these are based on what knowledge of the situation we posess and our own views and tendencies for that particular situation. Hardly do we consider what frame of mind is the other person in, what kind of background to the situation has led him to such a behaviour.

Its a completely different world for me as soon as I empathise. And I have always realised one thing, often my first thoughts towards an event's occurance have been wrong. And this I know because I always evaluate why I thought what I thought and what should I have thought after empathising. So before we take any actions based on our thoughts, its very very necessary to empathise.

Human wants are endless, and ends to achieve them are scarce. Our entire species have self-invited themselves to the boxing ring, forever fighting with other species of the same race for a common goal, without realising that it would be much easier to unite against a common enemy and  jointly share the rewards. This is easier said than done, but the first step towards harmony is to Empathise.

I am sure that if I start giving practical examples to my claims above, it will use up a lot of webspace, but my theoretical comments upstairs should be enough to drive in my point.

So encourage everyone to Empathise and if it helps to change your attitude and improve your relationships with people you did not understand before, do make every effort to spread the message around.

S01E01 - The One Which Is First

Have read a lot of such titles while downloading sitcoms from the internet, so thought of giving my first blog a similar title!

Btw, before I continue, s01e01 stands for Season One Episode One, another unique feature of the way Americans like to title their sitcoms.

Friends has been my first stint with US sitcoms. Wasn't really into watching anything else but Cartoon Network till my late school days. Then it slowly moved to the then called Star Plus (must be something around 1995) which had very early morning shows (5:30 am) of Batman & Robin, Spiderman and G.I. Joe. Attended my morning school after this meant I could come home and watch Centurians and Swat Kats on Cartoon Network. Studies followed after this, and again some more TV in the early evening, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Star World, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched and Diff'rent Strokes on other channels (dont really remember the name of the channel, i think it was Sony and Home TV). Then went away for a tiresome (and sometime injurious) play-time sessions of Sankli and Chor-Police. Coming back home for dinner was a very difficult decision for me every night, but then got to watch Dekh Bhai Dekh on Sony and Shreeman Shreemati along with and after dinner, and sometimes late night episodes of Malgudi Days both on DD National.

Just a blurry image of what I remember of my good ol' days back then
:)