Warranty Void!

What is left to guarantee in life? Do you still have true friends? Ones that you guarantee will stay next to you in good and bad? Where has friendship gone? and why have relationships became so superficial? Shall we blame technology or we were actually ready for technology to ruin what was left of relationships?

In the Arab world, the word “Man” used to be given to someone who keeps a promise, whether they were males or females .. To be a “Man” you need to be someone who others can trust, and depend on, and in many instances, some ladies were named “Worth a 100 men” because of their strength to persevere and keep their promises to their friends / close relatives… How rare is this today?

Many people blame technology for keeping them engaged with things rather than “alive” creatures, and to a great extent, that is true, when it comes to distractions, but when I started root-cause analysis to why relationships became superficial, I found a different root cause … a deeper cause than technological distractions .. that was:

I looked deeply into the relationship model that governs human beings and the process involves 5 main steps (abstracted from Travelbee’s theory):

1. Personal Encounter. (Breaking the silence between two human beings).
2. Exploring identities. (Sharing qualities / differences / complementers between two individuals).
3. Empathy (Sharing feelings with each other).
4. Sympathy (feeling for each other).
5. Trust.

From the above five steps, can you see the gap in relationship? Can you look into each step and identify the current human relationship challenges? Let’s explore one by one ..

The Encounter!

Nowadays we have more people focusing down on computers, screens and mobile phones than those looking to each others’ faces, and this leads to having much more virtual encounters than actual encounters. So we touch base with each other via screens rather than eyes .. How good is that for an encounter? .. A very challenging one for sure ..

Exploring others?

It’s not only mobile phones that distract people, but actually the whole material life that people are now running after, with very limited time spent to explore and know others.

The art of “exploring” something requires people to have great curiosity about the “other”, and to feed that curiosity, one needs to spend a lot of time to look, listen and learn about the other party. Look at their behavior, listen to them carefully and learn about what they need and prefer in life.

Who are you curious about? Really thirsty to know about?….

Empathy & Sympathy ..?

Once upon a time, this was the best feeling we shared with a lot of people around us. Neighbors, friends, classmates …etc .. We felt with them and for them and relationships were formed and strengthened this way ..

I remember, in good old days, when a neighbor had a funeral for one his family members, and the whole neighborhood decided to delay few weddings that were planned in respect of the grief one family is having .. I also remember when one of our fellow colleagues at the university used to take lecture notes to another sick colleague’s house daily until she felt better .. We shared food, clothes, cars, study rooms, and most importantly, we shared feelings together and it was very common that someone’s parents would support another student to get over their problems .. so we even shared parents at certain times …

What do we share today?

Look around you today and ask yourself from deep within .. whom do you really trust? What do you share with them? Do you share enough? Ready to share more? Curious to know about important people in your life? Are you spending enough time exploring?

It’s a plea to cherish feelings once again, and regenerate the trust that we all need in our lives ..

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher