There was once a man who lived alone in a small flat. Every month he used to go to the bank to collect his pension. But after sometime the bank authorities noticed that he had not been coming to collect his pension. They became worried and wondered why he had stopped coming. They decided to trace him and find out why. When they got to his house, they couldn’t get in. they asked his neighbours after him and they all replied they haven’t seen him for some time either. One of the bank authorities decided to break down the door and what they saw was a complete decomposed body of the old man. Perhaps, it had been several months since he had passed away but his relatives and neighbours knew nothing about it.
“No man is an island” wrote the seventeenth-century poet, John Donne. We are all part of the living stream of humanity. But today, we find that inter-personal relationship is now a thing of the past. We are increasingly becoming separated and isolated. We forget to call on our neighbour to find out how they are fairing. Families are becoming separated, joint families becoming nuclear and nuclear families becoming single parent ones. Several other relationships are fast becoming a matter of convenience and opportunism.
Some of us go to a great length to obtain job knowledge and acquire skills, but we pay little attention to people around us and to personality traits and habits which determine the reaction of others to us. Acquiring skills, knowledge and the search for our daily bread is necessary but, they do not in themselves make for success alone without the ability to get along with others.
As the world changes, information and communication technology advances, our access to information becomes faster. There are phones, internet everywhere that we forget the most important aspect of our living ‘relating to people.’ We believe that the ‘phone call’ will do the job for us. The ‘emails’ will soothe sadness, the ‘text messages’ will comfort others when they are down and the ‘mms’ will represent our presence. We often give the excuse “my schedule is tight.”
Yes, these communication gadgets go a long way to help in some situations, but they are not sufficient enough to elevate the relationship of society to an order that is genuinely human. It is the ability to get along with people physically that counts.
Therefore, developing skills in humans relationship is one of life’s basic tasks. So always treat others as you like them to treat you and always keep up the relationship and be there for your friend, neighbour and family.
