Let's see the good in others

Express Tribune

30-03-2025

The writer is an educationist based in Kasur City. He can be reached at [e-mail]
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Hazrat Ali (AS), the fourth caliph of Islam, advised his sons, Imam Hassan (AS) and Imam Hussain (AS): "Keep your affairs in order and maintain harmony in your relationships because I heard your grandfather, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him and his progeny), say: 'Resolving mutual conflicts is superior to canonical prayers and fasting of a year'."
You need a childlike way of spending life to usher in happiness in whatever you do or whosoever you interact with. Unsoiled by all guile and craft, children deal with others to enjoy themselves and please others. They don't prolong their anger into malice. They do throw tantrums, but a change of time and space puts them in new avatars.
One thing we must know is that to be happy is an act willingly orchestrated and a state of mind followed by the selfless pursuit of that act. The motivation behind that act is actually what decides the nature and sustainability of our happiness.
Social media and texting go abuzz with unsolicited moral policing exhorting the importance of letting go of old grudges on the occasion of Eid. One should let bygones be bygones, but there is an ultra-thin borderline between self-respect and ego.
Our first overtures to mend fences face the static friction caused by our ego. To initiate resumption is the negation of our ego. It saves us from self-blaming and self-loathing for not having exhausted our options to salve the tattered relationship. "The recompense for an injury is an injury equal thereto (in degree); but if a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is due from Allah; verily Allah loveth not those who transgress." – The Quran (42:40)
But if anyone still stands egotistically adamant, now your self-respect must nag you to desist from stooping too low lest the other person might get emboldened with his arrogance. To save him from being solidified on his stance, now leave your sincerity to prick his conscience. One must learn to manage one's Stone Age brain in the 21st century.
To know whether you are opinionated down to the subconscious level, check the inbox and gallery of your mobile phones. If they are stuffed with images and screenshots you haven't checked for ages, you test positive. It signals that you are too slow in letting things go.
In an experiment in psychology, it's illustrated that the weight of an object doesn't matter if you are to hold it up for a few minutes but the longer you keep the object aloft, the heavier it would become.
The 13th annual World Happiness Report 2025 describes an experiment wherein people express low probability of the lost wallet being returned. The results were against their apprehensions: "The rate of wallets returned was almost twice as high as people predicted." The distrust was termed 'empathy gap'.
The report concludes that "belief in the kindness of others was more closely tied to happiness." John F Helliwell, an economist at the University of Columbia and a founding editor of the report, says the wallet experiment proves, "People are much happier living where they think people care about each other."
"Look seriously at the people with whom you are working, with whom you are living, who are on your streets, and put on a rosier set of glasses when you're dealing with them. And that'll change your behaviour in traffic. It'll change your behaviour in political discussions. It'll change everything," Helliwell said.
Psychologists assert that to make opinions of others is to search our psychic equivalence, "wherein we project our mental states into reality and others' minds".
Dr Lara Aknin, professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and an editor of the World Happiness Report, warns: "If we expect the worst of others, we walk around the world fearful, and that matters for our own well-being."
Our good experiences are short-lived than the negative ones unless we make an effort to let them stay with us. That's the premise of Hardwiring Happiness, a book by psychologist Rick Hanson who explores how consciously sticking to positive moments counterbalances the brain's built-in negative bias. "Your brain has a negativity bias that makes it like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones," Hanson says.