Why Are We So Interested in Others?

The phenomenon is almost a subliminal epidemic, creeping its way into almost every conversation, interaction or experience- most of us are knowingly or unknowingly but very unnecessarily interested in everyone else’s life. Logical thinking defies any need for discussions or judgments about anyone else’s actions, decisions or attitude, but surprisingly logic does not play a part here. It is beyond all reason, talking about and evaluating other people is an act we all are guilty of in some degree or form.

Some cultures accept it and even encourage it, while others are more circumspect about engaging in ‘gossip’ publicly, but unfortunately nowhere is it condoned. The media feeds on such instincts of witnessing other people act and react by the assembly line production of innumerable reality shows. The tabloids churn innumerable dollars out of stoking this superficiality in attitude by serving more and more junk about lives of the famous. More enterprising of the lot, leverage upon this latent desire by creating myriad social networking websites that give you opportunities to peep into other people’s lives. All this could be justified by unsound logic and warped reasoning, but the truth remains that such endeavors are borne out of and fueled by us wanting to observe and comment on even the most inconsequential action of someone else.

When strangers pass by us, we instinctively give them a look-over, as if hoping to find something out of the ordinary that can be semi-secretively smirked at, replayed in our own heads or be turned into a topic of discussion with friends. When an acquaintance acts away from the norm or is on the receiving end of lady luck’s frown, it is turned into a topic of debate amongst friends, each passing judgments that effectively make no difference to anyone, including the protagonist of the discussion.

If all this is so illogical, inconsequential and every bit unnecessary, why are we still so interested in what the other person says, acts, wears, behaves, weighs and breathes? The answer completely escapes me, but the thought that this is so ubiquitous offends all aspects of my sensibility.

Though finding answer to this conundrum might be an act in vain, but there have to be solutions that discourage such behavior in the hope of total elimination one day. Channelizing our energy in other more fruitful directions could be an obvious but a practically difficult solution. This also points in the direction of engaging in discussions with minds that are nurtured through careful food of deep thought as opposed to ‘junk food’ of frivolity. Checking ourselves every time we act out of an instinct to discuss and evaluate others should be a matter of continual practice till it becomes our second nature.

The famous novelist George Eliot has said “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.”
If our aim is not to descend down the ladder of evolution, the beginning could be enriching our conversations and hence our thoughts. Like everything that encourages entropy in us, making other’s lives our business unfortunately comes easily to us. But like everything that cultivates the higher being in us, refraining from such behavior is a step toward the true us- so that we do not find ourselves to be the dirty tobacco pipe smoker with a bad taste.

The Magic of Many

There has been extensive research and writing on the value of teams, whole being greater than parts, and the beauty of synergy. What an individual can achieve in most instances is multiplied many folds if he is a part of a well-functioning team.

Although being in a high performance team is not a very frequent occurrence, especially if accountability is fuzzy, anyone who has tasted the experience will vouch for the impetus it provides to the final output.

The idea of ‘collectiveness’ is so strong that it extends well beyond the boundaries of the corporate world. A careful look around would expose us to these umpteen instances of people coming together, formally or informally, because they realize the advantages of working from a collective whole.

‘Being in it together’ is a real powerful phrase that helps individuals overcome intimidating mental blocks. There are myriad support groups that enable one to effectively achieve goals like destroying wasteful habits and reinforcing ‘positive addictions’. Anyone who has ever taken a group exercise class can understand the ease of sweating and working hard for sixty minutes when there is a collective huffing and puffing vs. repeating the same all by yourself- lest you have oodles of determination and self discipline a lone soldier might just not go the whole way. There is an interesting group that I read about called ‘Girls Gotta Move’ that helps you find running partners for you to re-fuel the motivation when you are faced with exercise burnouts. There are stories of people hooking up with their biking or running partners over the phone if physical presence is infeasible, providing them inspiration to go that extra mile, literally. There are communities of self-minded individuals that come together to generate unprecedented energies- like collective yoga gatherings or joining hands across geography for raising awareness on different issues. Community gatherings, support systems, SIGs of Special Interest Groups are just some of the examples that emphasize the thought that two heads are certainly better than one.

During some of my reading on the idea of collectiveness I came across few simple but effective ways for very large groups of people to come together and deliver great outcomes. Since most of us are a part of a tacit or explicit team, the new found believer of teams in me overwhelmingly wants to share some of these ways to leverage the power of a group.

Let’s take the instance where we need to come up with a statement as a team that serves as a proposition or has to fulfill a similar function. Writing this collectively could be a nightmare and hence is informally delegated to one member who drafts the proposition, while the rest critique and improvise. How it can be done with equal contribution from all is by posting everyone’s statement on a chart paper and providing each person with different color dots that can stick to the chart. Each team member goes around reading everyone else’s statements and sticks a dot on the phrase that he thinks is powerful in the sentence. At the end of the process the team picks up the phrases that receive the maximum dots and synergizes them into a complete proposition that has the equal essence of each member’s thought.

Another situation where team work can be unwieldy is collective decision-making in very large groups. This can be made seamless by beginning with many small groups that discuss the idea individually. They then elect one spokesperson to put their chain of thoughts in front of the original big group. Say there are nine small groups formed. The discussion table will have ten chairs, nine occupied by the respective spokespersons while the tenth left vacant for the other members of individual groups who have anything to add. The protocol must be they should occupy the empty chair, speak about the relevant point and vacate the chair. This way decision making and strategizing can be transformed from a clumsy, arbitrary process to a smooth procedure that can boast of possessing equal voice, irrespective of the size of the group.

I had all along been a self-proclaimed victim of dysfunctional teams with social loafers and hence was perennially dumped with most of the task. Though somewhere inside me I patted myself for being the martyr, little did I realize that I am unconsciously destroying the huge benefits that a team of equals have the capacity to achieve. There are innumerable innovative ways we can ‘feed on each other’s energy’ and deliver excellence. So the next time you are tempted to jump in and take over all the tasks and decision making in a team because you have branded the collectiveness as dysfunctional, think again because as Sir George Lewis said

“If the mass of the community breaks up into individualities, by social discord, there is an end to the facility arising from collectiveness of action.”

Toast To True Friendship

My mail box has been semi-inundated with mass mailers on ‘Friendship Day’. Not with standing the clichéd criticisms of such ‘days’ being marketing gimmicks of many companies, I am slightly jolted out of my self-imposed ignorance and reminded of almost a void that exists in most of our lives as we change our geography, status or simply age – a void that only mushy warmth of friendship can fill!

Categorically not emphasizing the first word in the very popular serial here – ‘Sex in the City’- this beautiful portrayal of true, non-judgmental and fun friendship can make anyone who possesses such friendships in their lives thankful and those who had but no longer do nostalgic . For those who have escaped the omnipresence of this true blue New Yorkers’ tale of four girlfriends, it describes a friendship that is so mature that the sole trigger for it can be genuine care and love.

I have been lucky to have experienced such friendships- but unlucky to have not comprehended their full-blown importance till they metamorphosed into virtual interaction and the small, big or no conversations over zillion cups of coffee transformed into emails, instant messages and long-distance calls. Only when impromptu shopping sprees, endless teary-eyed movie-watching late night collective binging and for-no-reason male-bashing suddenly evaporated and were replaced by me with myself for most part of the day, did I understand that those hallmark cards for friendship day were not as silly as they sounded.

As I regretted missing one of the biggest changes in my closest friends’ life, I came across this line from Richard Bach that said ‘Can distance truly separate friends…..if you want to be with someone, aren’t you already there?’ The idea is as uplifting as it is deep. It brings one to imagine the immense possibility of freedom if we are able to simulate the entire beauty and security of a great friendship within ourselves.

Let’s break that down. The best part of having a true friend is to have a detached ear listen to you- sometimes to give objective advice but most of the times to just listen. What if we start listening to ourselves with equal detachment and compassion? So the next time in a crisis when we suffer from a total lack of rational thinking, we take the role of a compassionate friend to ourselves who can relate to each feeling we are going through but is not overwhelmed by the emotions and can objectively listen. As we espouse the role of the listener, we would soon find all the fuzz in our thinking eventually giving way to nearest semblance of logic.

Another big plus of an honest friendship is that it is non-judgmental. Irrespective of the ‘morality’ of your actions, a true friend never attaches labels to you. There is an echo of the same thought in spirituality- the highest form of attainment being self-observation without judgment. So to be a real friend to ourselves, the labels of good, bad, pretty, fat, intelligent, ugly, selfish, all have to be thrown out of the window- replaced by an empathetic observation of our actions minus the evaluation. The eccentricities, the moodiness, the unpredictability of action are all considered peripheral and ephemeral, as compared to the belief a real friend holds in the true core that is you. Re-creating the same belief in ourselves by us would generate an acceptance that would be many folds of what a real friend would have exuded.

A famous quote says that a friend is a present you give to yourself. As we work toward turning ourselves into our best friends, the presents would undoubtedly be endless. I am blessed with few unadulterated- goodness- personified friends who are all that I have mentioned above and much more. Here’s wishing a very happy friendship day to all of them and most importantly on this day celebrating the true friend that I have in myself!