A wise man once said
The writer, Ayyad Dilawar Padhani is in Marketing at his family optical practice. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management, Marketing and related support services. He has been rendering community services from a very early age.
Have we lost sight of wisdom on the path of knowledge? A wise man once asked
W
hat is empathy? What is compassion and what is a sense of community or identity? And why are these things important if at all for addressing social and environmental challenges?
The importance of community life and empathy as social beings cannot be overstated. Being able to feel what they may be feeling is crucial to understanding each other and being able to function harmoniously as a group.
Perhaps the main reasons to be empathetic include building trust, loyalty and wellbeing among the people. These push a community forward, they allow for compounding effects on relationships. Being more empathetic comes from observing someone’s body language, taking the time to listen to their backstory and perhaps even live through some of it as well, asking genuine questions and avoiding assumptions or judgement. Doing this for others may return unexpectedly, when we need someone to listen to us, which is the basis for a community.
Some questions i’ve been thinking about when planning this essay were:
Why must we move towards becoming empathetic human beings?
Where does community service enter the chat?
Is there a higher, more impactful service we can provide? Such as perhaps, advocating for education and generation of value from ideas and knowledge?
Can we push ourselves to solve world problems on a global scale, albeit starting in our city, in our town?
What is our plan for expanding throughout Tanzania, East Africa, the wider world, for example, what is the plan for the Khoja community for showcasing the enlightening teachings of the Holy Prophet, which has the potential to bring about the golden ages once again for the world to benefit?
When we begin to ponder upon these questions, and decide to implement a plan, be it an imperfect plan, then we will be able to move much further, at a higher velocity, even if we may need to make changes to the plan as we move and discover more, to solve problems for people which they do not have the solutions or capacity for.
As the world becomes seemingly more connected through “social” technology, and reaching friends and family is a tap away, we have become more distant. A recent product introduced by Apple is the VisionPro headset, which allows users to dive deeper into technology, and further away from human connection in the real world.
What will the consequences of this device be? Especially considering if it is connected to AI products such as virtual AI friends. Perhaps what Facebook’s VR headset couldn’t do, Apple’s VisionPro will.
Information has certainly become more abundant and has become easier to access, but wisdom and enlightenment seem to be evading us as a consequence of constantly being updated, leaving zero time for sitting quietly with our thoughts for reflection and meditation.
What have the consequences of the mobile phone been? Both positive and negative?
Have we become more empathetic? Or further divided and isolated?
Re-learning social skills and human connection is a task that lies ahead of us, as we have a population that has lost touch with genuinely interacting with others, taking care of neighbours, sporting with friends and spending time with family.
In a distracted world, we become blind to the suffering of people in other parts of the world, such as Palestine, Congo, and other parts of the world that we may not even be aware about. When we see this oppression, we all feel the pain, our humanity is awakened, even after years of attempted desensitisation to killing and destruction through graphic media. We must pray for ease of their suffering, find ways of helping them from where we are, inform others about what is happening and raise as much awareness about the oppression.
Humans will find a way to survive and thrive through all these challenges, is my firm belief. We must strive to make life better by being kind to the person to our left and the person to our right, by helping the orphanage in our town, by volunteering to serve food at the community centre, by teaching to anyone who is willing to learn, young or old, by sharing what we have, or by simply listening.
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