On being thoughtful
There is nothing more beautiful than love. On bright days, love transcends us to the heavens. In trying times, love is the answer.
When deciding on where we want to spend this fleeting lifetime, we usually think about career, money, family, entertainment, and other things. My personal algorithm has evolved from a complex set of those, to being overwhelmingly biased in favour of one: love.
And I’m not talking about relationships and all of that. Yes, it’s important to surround yourself with love on a personal level. People you love and love you. The love I speak of here is on a societal and social level. Are my everyday surroundings a place where thoughtfulness and love are on display? Or are they a place where feelings and connections are repressed?
Growing up in South Lebanon, I got accustomed to greeting my neighbours, helping strangers, and having conversations with just about anyone. It’s almost unthinkable to be in the same room, bus, or beach as someone else, and not interact. And it’s all usually very genuine. The person asking you to “come on down” and “have a bite” is being absolutely serious. But again, I want to take it deeper. I have a story for you:
The other day, I found a damaged old table from our apartment in between the rubble of our now destroyed home (bombed by Israel in case anyone is wondering). My friend George out of nowhere took it to a carpenter friend of his, fixed it, painted it, and brought it back to life. He knew bringing back a tiny piece of our old heaven would mean so much, and he “just did it.”
This is in direct opposition to the individual lifestyle of Denmark, and the fake, selfish openness in America. And although I have incredible friends and family in both, society is simply not built in a way that encourages something like the above.
We’re still only scratching the surface. Let’s go deeper.
Friendships and relationships are just built different in a society where love is mixed in with daily routine. Thoughtfulness is painted across most interactions. People are there for you with such selflessness that it catches you off guard quite often, just like my story above. Acts of Kindness with no reciprocal expectations are normal. “How would they feel?” is a common question. Heck, “How could they feel?” is even more widespread.
A society where thinking about one another is a rare and often malicious activity is a society that is sick.
Individualism has taken over societies and turned them into walking private islands with little bridges in between. The saving grace of this sickness however is that the cure is simple. That same individualism means that you as a person can choose to be loving and thoughtful. Your acts of compassion can provoke a chain reaction of love that can spread over a whole city within hours, and a nation within days.
My latest unfortunately controversial take is in regard to this now over-popularised sentiment: “do what’s good for you. You’re not responsible for how others may feel or react”. No. We’re not monsters that live in isolation. Ofcourse the way your acts affect others should be taken into account. I even take this a step further, and usually in a way that makes people uncomfortable: While it’s important to fill your own glass before helping others, it’s also not a sin for you to sacrifice some of your happiness and comfort so someone else can experience those, even for a second. Sacrificing, giving, feeling discomfort, even feeling pain and loss, all so that someone else can feel a little more loved, a little less lonely, and a little more safe, is a heroic and beautiful thing to do. It is not some sort of self-hatred, but an investment that will come back 10-fold every single time.
And it’s not about good karma or whatever. When you give, you are automatically feeding your soul. And let me tell you, most souls are hungry nowadays. Society went from housing philosophers and revering them so they can help us understand the miracle of life better, to revering mortal material bullshit and imaginary online attention. A few of us work on hour values, and even less of us actually live by them. I’m no saint myself.
My friends: Love yourselves before you expect someone else to do it for you. But even before that, spread love in the world around you.
A more thoughtful society can be the product of a love pandemic, expect in this one, everyone can be patient zero. Start with you.
