A Helping Heart in an Instant World

A Helping Heart in an Instant World

We live in an instant society today. A society that has to have everything quicker and faster. If you have to wait more than 5 minutes, it’s considered a shame and disgrace. Fast Food restaurants are popping up on just about every corner. We can’t even take the time to walk into a restaurant and sit down and order, we have to be able to drive by a window and get our food fast. Bank lines are too hard to deal with, so we have automatic teller machines to serve us with immediate access to our money any time of day or night.

We can’t seem to wait until we can afford something today, we just whip out a credit card and there we have it, instant, plastic money, that allows you to live way beyond your means and obtain things that you would normally have to wait for. We feel that the postal service takes too long, so our letters are faxed from place to place in an instant.

Information at your fingertips at the speed of light!!!

I even saw a news story a couple of months ago that some funeral homes are now starting to build drive-by viewing windows so you don’t even have to get out of your car to pay your respects to a friend or loved one that has passed away. Imagine that for convenience and efficiency! A person need not waste time dressing up for a trip to the funeral home, in fact, they don’t even need to waste time getting out of their cars and walking in to greet the family. It’s so very convenient for them to just drive by and look through a glass window at their friend or loved one on display.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of automation in business settings; however, there are areas of our lives when we have to draw the line. Enough is enough.

Mankind has just become obsessed with saving time almost to the abandonment of human dignity. Heart Attacks are at an all time high, Strokes, and high blood pressure, is it any wonder? We are moving more and more towards a society that is completely controlled and bound by a clock.

We are all exhausted from the rat-race pace that they have had to maintain all week in order to remain efficient, cost-productive, and caught up with the neighbours!

The movie Bruce Almighty got me thinking. Is God too reduced to a variable in a time-based equation, and often eliminated completely due to lack of time?

What if God was bound by a clock or a calendar? What if it was not efficient or cost-effective for Him to continue to bless us with food and shelter? What if our prayers were spooled into a buffer or held on an answering machine until God finally got around to listening to them? Imagine how that immediate comfort we get from prayer would be delayed, what effect would it have on us personally?

As we tend to expect things immediately, we also expect God to answer our prayers immediately too. When He doesn’t answer them right away, we lose interest and think that God does not want to waste time with us! Have we ever thought that God might be telling us to slow down a little bit and have some patience? We have to remember, God does not use a clock or calendar in Heaven, time is not relative in Heaven. We are the ones that are totally wrapped up in time.

What I am trying to say is that it’s perfectly fine to automate businesses, and run them as efficiently as possible; however, abandon cost-time studies, and efficiency ratings when we approach matters of faith, love and family. Take the time necessary to enjoy life by just sometimes doing nothing but reading, or just slowing down long enough to pause and be thankful to God for the many blessings He has given you.

Recently noticed a Whatsapp status of a school friend which stated “My silence is just another word for my pain. Life is miserable”. Something made me dial her number even though there was an awkwardness in my heart that I would be speaking to her after years of not really keeping in touch. Turned out that she was going through a really low phase. 30 minutes later we were catching up on each other’s lives and she told me all that was bothering her. Promising to keep in touch she said that that one call had made her day. All she wanted was to talk to someone who wouldn’t judge her or ridicule her but just hear out her problems. Somehow talking to her had made me feel good too. Many a time we have all been guilty of ignoring people whom we know are going through problems just because we don’t want to take on anything “more” in our already busy lives. We are all too busy focussing our attention on portraying our “perfect lives, perfect family, perfect career and perfect emotions” to the World outside.

Behind smiling faces, we hide our broken hearts. Today in the world of instant messages, instant coffee and instant relationships, we don’t find the time to sit still and be there for one another. But what we don’t realise is that at the end of it all we end up feeling lonely, bitter, frustrated and angry with ourselves, because we have no one to share our problems with.

Real happiness is in helping others. Realisation begins when it hits us that all people everywhere have many problems they have to overcome. A lot of times in life you can get knocked down, you can get beat up and not want to get back up but you know you have to overcome the problems you have. A lot of times you know you can’t do that by yourself so you need the help of others and you need to understand that‘s alright. When you take the help of others bigger and better things happen than when you do it by yourself.

So pick up your phone and call that person who’s going through a rough time. That one call may be all that someone somewhere may just need.

Books like Tuesdays with Morrie and Robin sharma’s Who will Cry when you Die makes one realise the simple truths of life. One must read these books while going through the darkest phases of life. We all love and admire self-help books but usually, we soon forget all that we have read, but these books have more potential to always keep you going with its daily dose of “help.”Books such as these teach about how to handle stress with a smile, overcome the problems and lead a healthy lifestyle. They also make us realise about some of the simplest pleasures that we ignore in our stressful and busy lives.

When you help others, you yourself grow a lot as a person. Where there is a will there is a way, is a saying we hear often, but I would like to believe that where there is a willing friend, a helping heart, and a listening ear, there is a way to handle everything.

Make time to spend time with your loved ones. If they see you are willing to invest time in them, they will respond to your gift of attention in very positive ways. By all means, save time at work, but when you’re not at work, slow down and enjoy the beautiful God-given gift of life.

So cheers to a loving heart in an Instant World!!!

Rachitha Poornima Cabral
Assistant Professor
School of Social Work, Roshni Nilaya
Mangalore

Articles from the Author:

• Celebrating Womanhood

• Filler Words in English- How they can be a hindrance in every way!

• Roshni Nilaya Celebrates Aatid Onji Dina

• Time is Precious, Waste it Wisely!