Empathy in the Modern World: Lessons from “Love Hypothesis”

Recently, I completed reading this beautiful novel “Love Hypothesis” by Ali Hazlewood. It took me roughly a month to finish, as it was quite a long read. While I didn’t become a die-hard fan of the book, I felt like sharing my thoughts about it. I’ve read novels that I consider better, but this book holds a special place in my mind and heart. The author did a great job of detailing scenes like a movie, which genuinely helps my mind visualize the story. This habit of imagining animations for everything I read or learn started back when I was in Kota preparing for JEE, and my teacher encouraged us to imagine physics concepts. Anyways, coming back to the point. 🙂

When I first read an excerpt of this book, it seemed like a typical love story—a romance between a professor and a student. Pretty basic, right? The professor is the picture-perfect novel boyfriend. However, what actually attracted me was not the love story but the female protagonist, perhaps because she reminded me of myself in some aspects.

Hardworking? Check.
Underconfident? Check.
Not telling anyone that you’re underconfident? Check.
Scared of public speaking and crowd-conscious? Check.
But also end up doing great whenever needed? Check.

The one thing that made me relate to her and feel a bit sad about my personality was her tendency to lie and escape from bottled-up emotions complaining she doesn’t get that safe space for. This is something I’m not very proud of relating to. Of course, it was a novel, and she mustered the courage to express her bottled-up emotions to her friends and lover at the right time because, of course, the book had to end at some point.

How does real life work here? I have friends who are scared to feel emotions because they find it difficult to deal with them. What we as a society lack is empathy. The most human one will ever feel is by showing empathy and kindness. How often do we ask people around us how they are feeling? Whether at the workplace where we spend eight hours a day or in public transport where we run into an old friend.

It’s easy to pretend to be busy and not deal with the feeling of not being present for other humans. Not everyone is comfortable sharing experiences with someone they just met. Fair enough. Why would they? But imagine a situation where if each human were empathetic, wouldn’t this world be a better place to live?

I am convinced that when God came up with the idea of humans, they envisioned a species aware of how it felt to be in someone else’s shoes. Yes, they need knowledge, basic survival skills, and to take care of the beautiful bodies given to them. But most importantly, they must be able to take care of each other. The term “Human” is often related to survival of the fittest, but rather it is about the heaviness you feel when you think about:

• People we see every day on the metro to work, and some days they are just sad because they lost their pet.
• People we work with, and they might be less productive on a day because they are going through a breakup.
• People we share common apartment walls with, and one day we see a woman crying on the stairs because her husband is cheating on her.
• People we see on social media and judge so quickly but never understand how courageous they must be to put themselves out in the world.
• People who we grew apart from, but we suddenly hear something terrible happening to them.
• People whose hearts we broke because we could not understand how they felt.
• People we call family and friends, but get jealous when they get something bigger and better in life.

When did we forget to be empathetic and kind? How easy life would have been if everyone who saw another human thought of them as a human and not as prey for our negative emotions, or as competition who comes in the path of us being rich and succesful. No, don’t get me wrong, I also feel negative emotions every now and then, but the human experience is to be kind despite these negative emotions. I see social media filled with quotes, where everyone is searching for peace in a person and their homes, but seems like nobody is getting it. Why is it too difficult despite world having 8 billion humans?
How easy the world would be if anyone we saw gave us that peace and security our hearts are searching for? How easy the world would be if Humans were Humans again..?