Dabble In A Real Talk

...as against gadget addition.

- Reema Bansal Mehta

As a professor, I feel blessed. It’s one of the rare professions which still has a human touch left in them. I feel all the more blessed when I get to interact with my colleagues and my students. Recently, in one such interaction, a colleague sought advice on ways to arouse her daughter’s interest in homework. My subject being Psychology, and my having done some research for my own son, I could offer her some suggestions. On other days, I get to discuss nuances of teaching, or a new cake recipe, or politics.

In our whirlwind electronic-age routines, we are forgetting a very basic human requirement: Connection. In the parleys of Psychology, this is known as affiliation need. Beyond the primary needs of food, water, clothing and shelter, come affiliation needs. Valuing a person in the same room, more than a person digitally online, goes a long way in fulfilling this need. Despite all the emoticons and stickers, a heart-to-heart chat with an old school friend over coffee is worth millions more than a WhatsApp chat. We need to assimilate this fact deeply inside us and take control of our gadgets, instead of vice versa.

Here are a few steps we can take: