There is a movie that I watched recently that created an impact in me. This is an amateur attempt of my transliteration of my overthinking brain:

Knowing some of the IPC acts through this movie, I was tempted to do a web search “Can you practice law after 40s”. A part of my overthinking brain has an insane talent to build a creative fantasized world that I feel it real, much more real than the current life that I am on. I come back to see I lived 10 years of life in a couple of minutes.

It is only a couple of movies that usually let my overthinking brain build fantasies. All through this movie, I felt something crucial was missing. I realized, how the creators of the movie, tried their best to include the “massness” that the Rajinikanth movie should look like. Had it been “mullum malarum” rajinikanth movie, this movie would have had enough moments for the compassion that they were trying to bring on along with the education they were aiming at. Hence it felt like a compulsion rather than the compassion. The choice of the characters were safe too, in order to make sure there is “massness” and “good image”.

On this train of thoughts, I was questioning myself what is compassion, what is empathy.. “Be empathetic” was a tag in the algorithm for a couple of weeks. Who would you be capable of empathizing with? How would you justify that your understanding of the empathy is the one the receiver anticipates? It is not well defined, to be honest and to my perception.

A lawyer wins a case for the first time in a while. People who are very close to the lawyer pour congratulatory messages. Would you call the people who know the lawyer and care about the lawyer empathetic or do you call the judge who approved the lawyer’s arguments, empathetic? The judge should not be empathetic, right? How do you play fair midst the chaotic variables scattered before you? You have a chat with an AI, it would bring all half-knowledge based search across the globe to give you a sophisticated answer. But there is no answer to start with, for the question itself be a nonsense to many to begin with. You ought to replace the scenario as someone else winning something instead of lawyer winning a case, in order to have the questions make sense.

If you are reading this, you probably just wanted to confront me for what I have written or dead curious on what ranting have I scribbled or trying to find a small sentence that might be a solace, or judging me and I am writing this because I am just another argumentative Indian. We create the meaning and justifications to what we do.

People who have privileges, have their base of empathy on the statistics that they have read or been told to pretend they are empathetic. Their empathy if not demeaning, it just makes you want to run away. I would rather be scolded than been called empathetic on the topics that I speak that I can’t empathize with. However, people around you portray a tint of their own stories (might be out of their experience or from what they have been fed with based on books/degree/news/socialization/sadly AI) when they hear you rant. Those who cant paint those pictures, just skip you and never show up. People who can pretend, stay around you most likely to get some help from you. People who truly care many a times try to insert the solution that they would/should have applied in their life. Yet there are people who ask you to wipe your own tears by handing you a hand kerchief (no, not tissue paper, but a hand kerchief, that can be washed and reused and store memories without the knowledge of AI or data breach)

However people with less privileges, are rare to be found. They disappear soon from this world. They do not survive the marketing based world, they do not survive the fame oriented world, they are humble and hidden. Rarely when they are surfacing in a visibility, they are shut by either their own wounds or by a brutal execution planned by and from an ideal society. They are hardly known by 0.5 billionth of the world population. Yet that 0.5 billionth of the world population would have seen some peace and happiness that can not be even created in the rest of the population’s dreams.

So you are bound by people who compel you to have compassion. Just like a hashtag to temporarily popularize complicated manipulations. The compulsion soon becomes aggression instead of compassion. The compassion takes time and waits for the right moment to help you pull out of your dark tunnel. However, the compulsion breaks your hands by pulling you out and you fall into a different tunnel.

To some level I can confidently say that “you are the best person in this world who can empathize with you! show all the compassion you can for yourself.” I have seen a generation of people who believe “living for others make you the best human you can think of” and I have seen a generation of people who believe “you should be the priority on your choices. Only then can you take care of others healthily”. “Do not just survive, Live” is what I would like to believe. You define “living”. Where are you coming from? an abusive environment that starved you from food &/ love &/ respect &/ luxuries or an environment that showered you with everything? Choose that makes you a better healthy person, sometimes it might be “putting yourself first” to experience that you have been longing and sometimes it might be “putting others the first” to experience the contentment in sharing what you have got or sometimes it might be “there exists God” or sometimes it might be “sleep”. Choose your choice with no regrets and stay strong to choose the next option that may or may not contradict your previous options. May be, be compulsively compassionate to yourself?