Another train trip across country in the communal compartment carriage tunes mind to a philosophical observation. Compassion and empathy- that's probably all, not much we have left, that we can offer to each other in the future, when robots will be better than us in everything else, from accounting to drawing pictures. And how little of these emotions we prepared to show in everyday's life, that sometimes you have to go to a psychologist just for a bit of human warmth. Ironically as simple as the train car can provide a free psychotherapy on wheels. The opportunity to speak out to a stranger, to justify themselves, to get approval, and then just dissapear from each others life.
When I studied at school, in our classroom, there was a famous quote on the wall that I learned by heart: “Compassion is the most important and, perhaps, the sole law of human existence.” - Fedor Dostoevsky. While compassion is still in limited supply, it’s good to be able to put yourself in the shoes of another and 20 hour long train ride gives you that opportunity to immerse into dozens of people's life scenes circling around.
Also what its good on train is a light read. For me this time it was the fantasy book from childhood I mentioned before about the girl from future by Kir Bulychev. Luckily there are seven volumes of his Alice stories so there is always one I can reread. This time I was amused how simple is the solution for peace in the world it suggests "By the end of the twenty-first century, there will be no longer any secret bases, armies, bombs or cannons on Earth. The idea of killing each other to take away land and cities or impose own way of living on others will become disgusting to people of the twenty-first century. The most important rule: a person should live as he wants, be friends with whom he wants, go wherever he wants. A person should be free. On one condition: his freedom should not harm other people. But when people learned this, it turned out that the number of happy people increased by thousands of times.
Of course not everyone will be happy. This does not happen. Grievances, broken hearts, quarrels, and even such feelings as envy, hatred, anger, will remain. They cannot dissappear. But if the society in which you live, acts according to the principles of good, then your malice remains your personal matter. Your stupidity is your misfortune, your envy is your anxiety. We will become tolerant, and a sense of humor will become a must for all. Smile, doctors will say. Smile, and you will feel better. Such medicine will help."
I know it sounds a bit naive but hopefully miracle will happen and humanity will develop to another level more compassionate to each other.
On the pic is the Easter eggs exhibition open-air in Lviv, West Ukraine
