E.I. — The Third Eye

When I grew up, sometimes I heard my mother grumbling, “If one sees a horse on the horizon, suddenly one has to act lame!” I wonder if mums quietly felt that way more often than it has ever been documented.

When I think back, I see that we took our mums totally for granted. They seemingly did absolutely everything for us, under the sun and moon – cooking, cleaning, planning, caring, and the list goes on. Our fathers were excused for bringing money home, whereas the children were exempted from life’s chores because they have to go through the grind when they grow up anyway, so leave them be!

When a woman gets married, the Indian family background compares her with Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. Apparently, they are given control of everyone’s well-being in the family. I see it slightly differently. To me, she is suddenly the captain of a ship with not only all the responsibilities of a ship full of people at her disposal, but she is also the one and only crew in her ship with everyone else travelling in it.

Whether she knows what she is signing up for or not, whether she is ready to take up that journey or not, is not something anyone bothers about in the excitement and hullabaloo of getting married. It’s like you take up a job and get yourself fitted into it over time.

No wonder my mum grumbled about it at times. She did more than her best, yet she didn’t think anyone appreciated her much and the hurt that caused lives on in her memory of the past, still now after fifty years passed by.

What is missing in here?

In our schools, colleges, and universities, we are taught to succeed in external life, to become economically independent. Then, we are all on a rat race in the outside world. We learn to act appropriately, otherwise our livelihood is at stake. But, in the home-front, most of us are still very much self-centred – simply because we can, and we often do get away with it.

In a flight towards success in the outside world, we don’t put enough importance on being humane – being kind, considerate, compassionate, cooperative.

It’s really hard to make people understand that there are so many perks on being humane – it enables us to enjoy harmony among people and that only can make us truly fulfilled.

I bet if there was money involved behind all the services mums provided, the world will have a different face today.

How can we change?

I reckon our basic education system needs to have some changes. It can’t be left to the family traditions. We need activities and projects that nurture the kindness and compassion within our community through the hands of the children. Only through our children, we can bring changes – today’s education will be tomorrow’s actions, especially when the children will get the authority and responsibilities as adults. All we can do today is to teach them what’s right and what’s wrong.

Someone once told me that “humility” is something you learn. It can’t be taught.

I hope we will be able to teach kindness, compassion and cooperation instead and humility will perhaps follow its due course.

How do we measure the change?

Alongside I.Q (Intelligence Quotient), in the current era, there is this new concept of E.Q (Emotional Quotient), a measure for E.I (Emotional Intelligence).

In short, emotional intelligence involves five things

1. Self-awareness
   • Recognizing and understanding one’s own emotions – finding one’s strengths and weaknesses
2. Self-regulation
   • Regulating own’s emotion. Managing the weaknesses.
3. Motivation
   • Drive to do away with your weaknesses and improve personally
4. Empathy
   • Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and see a situation from their perspective.
5. Social skills
   • Listening to others without judging
   • Communicating effectively to make others feel better or help improve their situation

It’s hard to measure each individual’s advancement in all the above sections. Perhaps, there will be some means of testing E.Q. in future to incentivise being a good person. Like one gets energy credit in some European countries for buying an electric car, will we get some goodness credits for having a higher E.Q?

Apparently, a high IQ and a high EQ together is a recipe for success! Personally, I think we could have still got a great life without all these modern advancements of science and technology, even without the computer on which I am writing this post. Won’t I miss all the facilities we are so used to these days, damn sure I will! Yet, we will perhaps be better off with people striving for higher EQ than getting tutored for the next exam.     

Will a high E.Q score mean that we will certainly have our third eyes opened up, slowly, with careful practice, in a collective fashion? Will this world of ours feel like a much better place to live in, then?

Only time can tell!

P.S. Image Credit: Rhett Wesley from unsplash.com