An Epiphany that came back full circle....

An important epiphany of my life .....

Setting the context and backdrop:

When I was in undergrad college, a bunch of my close friends from my elementary school days and I joined a private coaching institute for taking the entrance exam for admission into the Master's degree (Master of computer applications)

Imagine a building with first floor classrooms as described below:

The coaching institute setup was such that there are 2 parallel sessions run by two competent brothers (Teachers - Balendra sir and Tejendra sir) in two big classrooms side by side.

At least 200-250 students are at the building when the classes are in session. And students from across Hyderabad (India) city would come as it's a well-reputed one for the quality of teaching. We never needed to know any other students by their name whatsoever. Life's simple!

All my friends and I would meet up at a common bus stop by 5:30 am, we take a bus and get to the class and go to the undergrad college for the rest of the day. That's a typical working day daily routine in that academic year.

An incident happened:

So, one fine day, it was raining quite a bit and all of us hurried and got into our seats. We sat down in the front benches as usual and half the class was completed. We were on a short 5-10 min. break and we were just chatting.

We heard a big scream, noise and students were scrambling from the back of the classroom. There was a narrow passage from the staircase that leads to the classroom.

And soon we got to know that a boy, student from our classroom, got an electric shock from a high voltage cable that was sagging down and he accidentally got in contact with it, sprung back to the wall and was severely injured.

The shock was apparent both literally and metaphorically for us.

And, I had tears rolling down involuntarily and I didn't speak a word.

One of my best friends asked, "Why are you crying? Do you know him?"

On top of the shock we had, this was another mental shock to me... I didn't know how to quite respond properly to that question that hit me at the deepest levels..

My mind's dialog was explosive but to keep it in short.. It was like this.. "Why do I need to know someone to feel bad for someone's serious injury?" I have two protective, beloved brothers. And I felt, what if he has a sister like me and she gets to hear this? How would she feel for his brother? How would his mother and father react for a day that turned out like this for their Son? Aren't these simple human emotions? What else do we feel moved for, then, if not for incidents like this? This is a long list of questions......

But, a mind bending, thought-provoking question from my own best friend stayed with me? she had a different emotional frame than I did. I'm not an emotional person by any stretch. But, this was an exceptionally serious situation that let me feel myself in a different perspective and hence I call it epiphany too.

And I love all of my dear friends. My friends' different reaction doesn't make her or my lovely bunch any less compassionate. It created a deep, long-lasting inquiry in my mind as I kept on asking, why can't we simply feel for others without us knowing.

What's so wrong in my simple, naive human reaction that a question like that was warranted? Why? It stayed with me for all these years, became dormant but the question never left.

For me, it was so much insignificant about the subject / person who was injured, it was all about the confusion on how feeling for a stranger can take the inquiry to such need for familiarity. How are they both correlated? And why should they be so correlated even in extreme sad incidents?

Oh, on the very incident, he was admitted to a nearby hospital immediately. And tens of us paid a visit to the hospital before we headed to our college to make sure he was doing ok. He had severe burns and looked pretty bad but I believe he recovered in time. Thank God!

And a similar incident surfaced later that corroborated to the same intriguing question that was buried several years ago.

A somewhat big turtle was in the hot Sun while I was on a walk, a few months ago. And I wanted to return the buddy back to the lake nearby. I tried to ring a doorbell at a nearby house to get some cardboard or some quick tools perhaps..

I tried to pluck some short soft weeds around to create some base so I could pick it up and such...

I stayed there with these tries and a person with some garden equipment in his minivan was driving by in that small alley between the wooded trail.

So, as he tries to understand my plea that I want to save the Turtle, his one of the first questions was, "Is this your Turtle?".

This time, the shock was less and I was glad my long-standing, dormant but important question returned to me as I have different perspectives collected in life over time. I smiled and answered, "No, I saw it on my walk around here and thought I could return as it's getting hotter"

And he was a kind person who assisted in a timely manner. Many thanks to him.

My epiphany, my philosophy and my perspective in it's full realization:

One's own life’s value is met effectively only when one can value and feel sensitively about every other human within oneself.

No, you don’t need to know anyone one-one personally to feel for a fellow human with decency and kindness in your own thoughts, pleasant demeanor, speech and actions.

One must feel oneself well enough so feeling for others becomes effortless and natural. Being a good human is the best bet to have a fulfilling life. ??

Extending the thought further and matching my vibes to the unfolding political atmosphere:

Speech is supported by intentions and thoughts. It’s like a relationship between a monitor and CPU or a visualization graph and the data behind it.

Without a good thought, a good speech is almost inconceivable. We have to intend to think well, speak well of oneself and others, do well and live well intentionally and consciously.

Likewise, a bad act or a bad speech inflicting fear, inciting violence, emotional blackmailing and other threats etc., won’t happen by accident. They also do happen with an intent.

Keeping a good intent, having a conscious mind to think and speak well goes a long way in our own well-being too, especially in an overheated but cold and insensitive rhetorics played.

I'm grateful and feel the utmost optimism with many good hearts, minds and spirits who are relentlessly rallying around the good in human, the good in humanity, representing the best of human kind, speaking up, doing the right thing, keeping the decency, civility, human dignity as crowns as we walk shoulder to shoulder for doing GOOD in the most unambiguous ways and pronounced ways. If you are one of this group, my salutations and regards for you. Thank you for being YOU!

Best wishes to everyone who’s thinking well.

I'm praying for everyone’s safety, well-being and prosperity in the days ahead. These are challenging times. We will overcome this collectively. Good days?are ahead!

Thank you. Have a great week ahead.

About the Author:

I’m Veda Konduru, a former AI tech founder, data scientist, technology product architect with an academic excellence in science and technology with an overall 20+ years of subject domain career experience..

Inspired by some events in my life, I set myself off on a quest for exploring the role of natural intelligence, the human mind’s underpinnings, in the age of AI, and made significant strides in the past few years and I’m here to help others on a similar journey.

In short, An artificial intelligence architect NOW turned into The Mind Explorer.