Reserving In Your Heart A Seat for Everyone: A Path To Creating A Better Society.

 By; Haruna Suleiman Saleh, U17mm1031

The human heart is a crucial and fascinating organ, not only for its basic function of pumping blood into our body in order to transport oxygen and nutrients to our organs, but for its metaphorical significance, serving as the center of our emotions, feelings, compassion, love, empathy, forgiveness, generosity, and trust, as it is in many ancient studies.

The basic function is unarguably the same for everyone. No one has ever argued or considered the heart as an organ for seeing or hearing. What internally constitutes the heart is a topic of debate till date. But even from experience, we have come to terms that the inner quality of our hearts is not the same. One heart may be more forgiving than the others or one heart may react more than the others to different environmental demands. But what is not taken away from people is the ability to train this organ by whoever keeps an open mind.

What does it mean to RESERVE IN YOUR HEART A SEAT FOR EVERYONE? The phrase is often used to express or preach a sentiment of inclusivity, acceptance, and love towards people, regardless of their backgrounds, beliefs or lifestyles. It involves making an effort to understand and connect with people on a deeper level. Treating them with respect, compassion, kindness and prioritizing the needs of everyone according to the amount they deserve.

Practically, it may range from ensuring that people are not denied jobs and promotion in a place of work due to their ethnicity. It can also include maintaining inclusive spaces where individuals from different backgrounds and identities feel welcomed, valued and have equal opportunities to engage and participate in various aspects of society.

Why do we need to embrace this path? It is simply because it can keep us safe from some of the most poisonous things that can affect the heart, such as prejudice (Racism Experimenter bias, islamophobia, irrational hostility, nepotism). Prejudice is the cause of many things that have saddened and darkened the world today. For example, it is prejudice that once upon a time led the colonial masters to leave their country to come to a black man’s country and treat them as second-class citizens. It is prejudices that make people hold racist views on every matter. It is prejudices that make people to consider the people they share things in common as the best people, even when they are simply not. That’s the truth until we accept it, and the most effective vaccination for this virus of prejudice is embracing everyone as yours.

The way to achieve this inclusiveness is to cultivate things like empathy for others. Empathy is the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of other people. It is the ability to see the world from the view of other people. Empathy is what lets us know that the blood that flows in the veins of a white man is red and the same as the one in the body of a black man. Empathy is what helps us to recognize that poverty and unemployment is as frustrating to someone living in lagos as it is to someone living in Maiduguri. Empathy is seeing and understanding where people are coming from even if we do not agree with where they are going to. Empathy is a foundation and key to building a more caring and inclusive society.

Since diversity is almost inevitable in our life, the only way to celebrate it is to challenge our prejudices, practice love and forgiveness and, more importantly, open our hearts wide, and reserve a seat for everyone we encounter in our hearts on our shared journey through life. Let’s be what H.Z Ali ibn Abi Talid said in one of his quotes “Be like a flower that gives its fragrance even to the hands that crushed it”.