Friend Or Enemy

More people have been killed in wars than in any other calamity. Earth has witnessed innumerable wars, suffered immeasurable damage & borne the brunt of unrepentant human race. All the wars took place not because one side didn't agree to the views of another or because one religion opposed another; it happened because two people didn't see eye to eye with each other. They might follow same religion, might be from same country or family; yet be at daggers drawn. So, what makes them go against each other?

Man is an emotional animal. We take most of our decisions with heart. Not that we don't use our head or don't want to use it but whenever we confront an ugly situation or a person who thinks differently or speak something which is not in sync with our thoughts, we tend to fly into a rage. We want to behave logically but our head stops functioning. This is described as emotional hijacking. This happens when we give control of our mind, the center of our logical ability, to someone else. With our head gone, we are left with only our heart to function & it does so by reacting not by responding.

There is nothing wrong with taking help of your heart. In fact, emotional quotient is a very important tool to read the success graph of a person. But the problem is how we allow it to function; to our advantage or to our disadvantage. This will primarily depend upon the kind of feelings we have for another person. The root cause of hating a person doesn't lie with his color, creed, gender or religion, but with how we empathize with that person. When a child is born, he is emotionally connected to everyone so much so that he cries seeing others in pain. But as he grows up he starts realizing that the pain is not his own but someone else's. He doesn't know how to deal with this emotion but he still empathizes with others. By and by, his emotions for others start dying or are confined only to a few. Now he starts making distinction between his family & other's family, his religion & other's religion, his school of thought & other's way of thinking. He forgets that he was one with all when he came into this world. In short, the empathy in him dies.

If we can keep this emotion alive; if we can understand other's emotion rather than his actions, we would make more friends than enemies. In fact, converting an enemy into a friend will be a cake-walk.