It’s not the film I am talking about. I am deliberating upon the phrase – ‘dil pe mat le yaar’ or ‘don’t take things to heart’ or ‘don’t mind my dear’. Wouldn’t our lives be so much simpler if we could imbibe these phrases instead of bothering about every little thing? Wouldn’t we be happier, carefree?

Of course we are humans, we are supposed to feel. We have a heart and that’s what separates us from machine or robots who are now even threatening our jobs. Our ability to feel and our Emotional Intelligence (the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict) gives us an edge over these mindless machines.

We love, we nurture, we are sensitive towards others, we have empathy and that’s what makes us so great. Our warm, red and complicated heart sets us apart from our own creations’ machines and robots as well as from God’s other creations. No wait, it’s not our heart, it’s actually our brain. Our heart that has been so romanticized keeps beating only to circulate our blood.

Emotions, like love and fear are controlled by the limbic system, part of the brain located in the temporal lobe. While the limbic system is made up of multiple parts of the brain, the centre of emotional processing is the amygdala. Shaped like an almond, the amygdala is responsible for multiple emotional responses, like love, fear, anger and sexual desire. That emotions are from heart or emotional people are ruled by the heart is just a human construct.

So, it’s all about the brain after all, different parts of the brain dominating different people. Thus we have the logical, the creative and the emotional or the sensitive. I not saying that one is better than the other or we need to stop being sensitive or emotional. In fact, love, compassion and empathy are feelings or qualities to be cherished. All I am saying is we need to strike a balance; we need to stop bothering about every little thing and focus on the bigger things.

Recently I read a post by my cousin and fellow blogger Amrita or Moli as we call her. She’s a doctor, a wife, a mother of two boys, a writer and a blogger. Wearing many hats, trying to attend to everyone and everything must be quite a task. In her blog Everyday Little Things she writes about the challenge of trying to please all in the post ‘Lazy writing,’

I had relatives visiting, we went to beautiful locations. The experience could have been surreal had I not occupied myself worrying about everyone clicking together, eating together, moving together etc.

Does that happen to everyone else? Is everyone wary of other well-meaning people judging your home, your lifestyle, your kids ? Do we all waste our time with needless perturbations. Am I over cautious or just a kill joy for myself?

She has been so bothered by all these that she couldn’t make time to write, something that she loves to do. I could quite imagine Moli running helter-skelter to please everyone and as her elder sister my heart went out to her. My advice to Moli was:

Hey Moli, read your post. My advice to you, while  it is good ​to be concerned about other people’s happiness, your happiness is important too.  You can’t make anyone happy unless you are happy. And more importantly, do what you feel is right and don’t bother about what other’s think. Some people will judge you no matter what you do but that should not deter you. As someone said, ‘it’s all about mind & matter, if you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.’