‘Empathy’ under my mask, a timely necessity
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” This line, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, aptly captures the essence of the journey experienced by its character named Jay Gatsby. Metaphorically, it signifies the unending human struggle to move away from the past and sail into an ideal future of our making. It also highlights the irony present in this struggle, as many a time we end up just creating another reflection of the past.
As we put our lives on hold amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the prevalent lock-downs, this line surfaces in a new light with an added significance. Our past has morbidly witnessed many such pandemics. In the immediate aftermath and through the progressive years that went by, the future was ours to weave. Yet here we are, at a time that seems like a taunting reflection of that past. How do we deal with it?
We are now at a stage where the world has acknowledged the challenge posed by this novel virus, courageously put on a war chest and agreed on a common survival strategy underlined by social distancing and usage of masks. Our front-line warriors, our doctors and medical staff, are battling against this new-found enemy with limited resources and unparalleled vigor. For humanity to win this war and for our defenses to be effective in the long haul, one component of this survival strategy is utmost essential — Empathy. When we empathize with a person, we understand their perspective, accept their emotions, try to relate to their actions and proactively avoid masking them with quick judgement and anger.
Empathy is merely a hundred-year-old term that is mostly talked about in leadership training, corporate cultural off-sites and team-building exercises. Corporate world has come to realize its role in building effective managers that can use empathy to drive results from employees and create more business opportunities from customers. It is a proven hypothesis that a well-rounded leader cannot succeed in a corporate setting until he learns to empathize with his team members and customers. I came to learn about empathy early in my career. When you work with people from different countries that have distinct cultures, you have to learn to respect the inherent differences in their opinions and thought process. You learn to work around the disagreements and conflicts during meetings for the common good. You learn to imbibe empathy to survive in your professional life.
At this juncture, empathy is the single most important survival-tool in the arsenal of millions of people in lock-down all over the world. We need to use it to stop the discrimination against doctors and medical staff that are treating COVID-19 patients and reside within the vicinity of our houses. We cannot win this war if we mistreat these front-line soldiers who are risking their lives to keep our health infrastructure working. We need to use empathy to curb the attacks against police personnel deployed on our streets to enforce the lock-down and to track, trace and monitor those in self-quarantine. While we are stranded outside in queues to buy essentials for our families, rather than being impatient and rude in that situation, having a little empathy towards everyone in that queue is the need of the hour. The least we can do is extend our empathy to the maids, the security personnel deployed at our gated communities and nearby dwellings of daily wage earners by distributing food and masks through proper channels without breaking the lock-down.
Our dim and distant past is mired with crises where the focus of humanity was self-preservation even if it was achieved at the cost of our ever so gullible moral compass. These crises were amplified in their impact with riots and divided societies just because humanity lost touch with its strengths of compassion, kindness and above all its innate ability to empathize with others. We are now at a moment in time where we have a choice — we either learn from the past and behave with empathy this time or we let the history repeat itself and make a regretful example out of us for the future generations.
Rahul Nilangekar is a Product Manager, Entrepreneur and a budding Writer. He received his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow in India. His corporate work experience spans across the IT services industry and the Automotive industry.