Upon my return from a volunteer trip to Indonesia, my Director at my workplace who was previously a social worker asked me, “So what is real? Is that real or is our lives here real?”.
“I believe we exist in different realities”.
In a stride to be better, I’ve taken it upon myself to routinely step out of my personal day to day sphere of reality. I believe that by not taking conscious and continuous effort to forcefully peek my head out of the everyday reality I navigate, it would only reinforce and normalize my perspectives and experiences straying me further away from the realities of others.
While constant reminders of perennial issues such as war and poverty flashes on all forms of media, the messages and images conveyed desensitize quickly over time. Like how we change up our workout regimes when we reach a plateau, I apply the same principle in trying to keep myself grounded, humbled, and reminded of others’ situations and plights wherever I can, and at the same time acknowledge that some issues are extremely remote to empathize with.
I attempt this by physically involving myself in activities that are beyond and far from what I witness daily. This includes participating in activities or travelling to places where the people, their lifestyle and conditions feels alien (it does not have to be done abroad). Genuine experiential engagement in the others’ milieus has been effective in creating that connection.
One of the triggers that pushed me into adopting this mindset was when I realized how foreign I felt with issues that are so important and yet I felt a great disconnect with. I still continue to pop my head in and out of reality spheres of others’; some spheres regularly with hopes to create lasting and meaningful impact, and others to self-educate, self-remind and self-motivate.
thatmalayguy 