Love your neighbours
BENGALURU: A few months ago, media outlets picked up a story from social media posts, a little anecdote about how a Korean parent travelling for the first time on a long-haul flight with her six-month-old, handed out earplugs to the neighbours on the flight, apologising in advance for any disturbance the child might create in its discomfort. Netizens were all praise for this parent’s thoughtful gesture and appreciated the love this person showed their child by making sure that people around the child were primed to be forgiving and accepting of the child’s behaviour, even when such behaviour would have been involuntary, the child is helpless and unknowing of social cues.
Cut to a flight I recently took, where a bunch of unruly passengers repeatedly refused to listen to the air crew’s instructions to sit and keep their seatbelts on. Instead, they gathered around each other, passing khakras and other kinds of snacks, talking and laughing at their loudest. When asked to quiet down, they would say things like, “I paid for my seat, and can talk or laugh as much as I want! Why would I not do that?” and a more belligerent, “We are a family. We are loud in how we love each other. If you have a problem, you can just go to the back rows of the flight where you can’t hear us.”
The uncouthness of these passengers in contrast to the Korean passenger described earlier, makes one wonder what is love and where its boundaries lie. The question then is, can we really love ourselves and one another to the exception of the world around us? Is it love if, in wanting to enjoy and experience a relationship we have, we do not mind at all that we are trampling on other people’s spaces? Where does one’s relationship start and end, especially in the context of coexisting with other relationships?
In a closed space like an aeroplane, and certainly if one is otherwise living in multi-generational or multi-cultural spaces, these questions become a lot more apparent, than if one was living in an insular place with little overlap with others. We all want to relate to our loved ones, express love, share food and laughter, tease each other, share stories and whatever else one wishes. Is it ok if we are never able to do it, or if we insist on having freedom for all this available everywhere, all the time, no matter who else is around and what shared spaces we inhabit?
Love can be many things: Love for oneself, love of one’s own, love of one’s own with respect for others as well, and ultimately, love for everything while still holding special spaces for special people. Too often, we are not really able to see beyond the limiting spaces of love for oneself and one’s own. However, the more we try and hold the larger context, and practice loving mindfulness to all around us, the more we are able to grow in our relationship with ourselves and others.