The Bigger Picture:The trend must be for human beings to come closer together. It is the only route that truly reflects our nature, and so will bring individuals and the global community freedom and peace, writes Shalini Sinha.
While the social forces of globalisation have opened this process up in various ways, it is easy for us to get distracted and pull each other apart rather than together. Indeed, in this period of globalisation, it is ironic that more individuals are feeling isolated, lonely and alone.
We are connected in many ways. Our national leaders have been engaging in international politics for centuries. Regional climates around the world are influencing each other. Businesses are breaking barriers: scanning for tax breaks, searching for cheaper labour areas and expanding their markets.
Our weekly shop now includes produce grown all over the world, imported and available at our demand. We can now see, talk and write to someone across the globe at any time, and expect an immediate response. More so, most of us are now taking our holidays in another time zone and climate, even planning special overseas trips just to do our shopping.
All this is understandably dazzling. With so much going on, it is easy to get pre-occupied (indeed, there's just more to pull our attention in different directions). In this, we can find it difficult to focus on what actually means the most to us in the world: each other.
Things can move so fast that connections are missed. As a result, our potential to be removed from each other has been increasing.
Commerce is taking place from further away. Warfare is now possible from a distance. We spend more time rushing from one task and place to another and less with those right in front of us.
Amid this, what occupies us most is how we look, what comforts we have, whether others like us, and if we're good enough.
Irrelevant. All of it. We were born, and that's enough. Human beings, in our design, are likeable. This is not something that needs proving. It is what is unique to us - our quirks, differences and diversity - that enriches this world and makes us specifically loveable. What is unattractive is not difference, but rigidity.
Judgment of others is not possible without judgment against one's self. Similarly, the exclusion of another is not possible without somehow denying a part of your self.
Standing for closeness means standing against those things which divide us and force us to be less than ourselves, even when they seem as trivial as "blue for boys" and "pink for girls". It matters. Why should we allow a personal interest in something as superfluous as a colour be taken as markers of character?
Why should we tolerate five-year old boys feeling less "acceptable" because they like pink, and 10-year-old girls feeling less "feminine" if they embrace the colour blue? Forcing our children into boxes is anti-spiritual, flying against imagination, freedom and love.
We can move ourselves into a time when we truly value each other beyond superficial differences. This is a demonstration of real faith, and something worth investing in. It is not natural to fear what is different, unless you have been raised to be fearful. If you lived in a world of encouragement and acceptance, your response to difference could only be one of wondrous curiosity and interest to learn. It is in this attitude that it is possible to find real strength and power residing.
In the journey to embrace others, the first person for us to welcome is our self. Our passions, courage in the face of struggle, and inherent greatness are all worthy of love . . . as is the physical form which embodies them.
Our body is nothing less than beautiful and deserves our respect. If we struggle to feel love for ourselves, it will be difficult to see the beauty in our faces and bodies, and so treat them in ways that reflect that beauty.
However, as our feelings have never been a good guide to reality, it is most likely their beauty has always been there, even if we can't see it.
There is a picture of me when I was seven years old. I am crying and wearing pyjamas that ironically show the words, "Please be my friend." We were in India celebrating the festival of colours, Holi. It should have been a playful, exciting time for a child, except that an overbearing uncle lost the run of himself and started teasing me to the point of making me cry. In remorse, he then took my photo.
I don't know why my mother later mounted that picture onto a nice piece of wood. Every time I saw it, I just felt the feelings of torment, and thought I looked awful standing in my pyjamas crying.
It was many years later, after my own self love grew deeper, that I saw that seven-year-old girl as beautiful, innocent, passionate and releasing her feelings. What more power of humanity could I embody? Why not love her?
Shalini Sinha works as a life coach and practises the Bowen technique.