Empathy – Novel concept of Human Library!

Last weekend saw me and my husband attending something pretty interesting!
Human Library – is a novel concept which has started its edition in Hyderabad 1st and now in Bangalore.

We both had registered out of curiosity. We got a mail confirming our registrations and a time slot was given for us to come. We went to the venue wondering how the event will play out.

There were 7 books from which we could choose. We realized that time slot was just 1 way of confirming for 1 book but we could actually visit other books in other time slots if it were open.

Each book topic had got us curious but with time constraint and slot constraint, we chose 2 books to attend on that day. I mention attend here, as the book(author) shares his/her story and we can have discussions/question-answer as needed. Since this was the 1st session, there was 30 mins time slot fixed so that everyone will get a chance with the books.

I am not going to share on what were the books and what was discussed, because this is something one needs to experience and have their own insights on it. You can read more about them in these 2 sites :

https://lbb.in/bangalore/human-library-bangalore/

https://www.facebook.com/humanlibrarybengaluru/

What I am going to delve into is how interesting this idea is and why we should have more of this to spread “Empathy”.

If you read the “about” section of human library page, they mention: “The Human Library is designed to build a positive framework for conversations that can challenge stereotypes and prejudices through dialogue.”

Empathy is an emotion or I can even call it a tool, which can help us immensely in our lives – both professional and personal. In this era, where we are all chasing dreams, numbers and are all moving so fast to get where, which even I don’t know, we are missing on one very important aspect of life called Empathy. We want everything done for us, we want others to stop and help/support us but are we ready to stop when someone else wants us?

In this generation, where we are more vocal about things and question the so called “stereotypes”, are we actually accepting the world as it is or want the world to be how we want to see it? There is less tolerance and anything that’s not in line with our thoughts, we either question it or fight it.
There are times when I believe that while we have access to more knowledge and these should give us the exposure to change our minds on lot of things, we are actually narrowing our mind on the knowledge.

We are all so engrossed in our lives, that we do not realize that the small world we lead in is not the only world but a small subset of so many things that this world has to offer! We believe that “things” happen to others and not to us!
The books in the human library question this narrow mindedness and want to bride this gap by making us aware and question the stereotypes and make us wonder, with the technology advancement, why are we not advancing in these thoughts!


I sincerely hope Human Library expands and we have more books/readers growing across the country to break these shackles and make our world more open-minded!

Comments

Rajlakshmi said…
What a brilliant idea. I would so love to attend one such session. And I totally with you on empathy. The tolerance level seems to be very low ... People hardly recognize the fact the world is different in so many ways... Brilliantly penned.
November 7, 2017 at 5:09 AM
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