to humanise ‘human’

Some times ago, I found a really interesting prose online, and it has been living rent free in the back of my mind. The short essay goes along the line in which they’re explaining about how our society has claimed to master the art of ‘emotional intelligence’.

With our daily engagement to digital media, we are getting exposed to ‘psychological’ and self-help content to help us know our emotions better. But despite this bold claim, why does it seem like people this age struggle a lot in fostering real connection? Isn’t the capability of understanding should lead to a betterment in navigating one’s dynamix in a relationship? Perhaps, the argument that we all are now ‘aware’ of our own EQ is largely attributed to perceiving EQ as a tool for self-defense, rather than for truly comprehending those around us. 

So, let’s first define what is actually an ‘emotional intelligence’. 

Ruisel (1992) portrayed Emotional intelligence as understanding others in a social context in such a way that it enables one to detect nuances in emotional reactions and use this knowledge to influence others by controlling and regulating emotions.

From the first read, we can understand that having EQ means noticing the subtle emotional and social clues, and for leveraging these observations to act in our best interest. 

Which is well, fair enough.

But, what I think is missing from us nowadays is that, we perceive having EQ as being good in identifying what’s ‘wrong’ with others. We start to label one’s behaviour and naming the patterns- ‘red flags’, ‘emotionally absent’, ‘avoidant’, ‘self-projection’… 

Though it is true that verbalising these labels helps us to assess the situation/person in a more objective way, we got too good and focusing more on ‘diagnosing’, before acting on ‘understanding’ first.

Rather than trying to comprehend why someone is acting that way- we shy away from the opportunity to create genuine connection without even taking a glimpe of what lays inside a person behind their masks. We start to associate these ‘imperfections’ as danger signals and we retreat away immediately- we start to ‘dehumanise’ humans. 

I think having EQ is not just about being good in recognising these patterns, but it is actually about having the discernment- to know when it is the right time to continue the connection, or to end it, while still being graceful to ourselves and those around during the process. 

The fact that people are glorifying the ‘art of detachment’ without truly understanding the context and nuance behind it is detrimental to us society as a whole, the same applied to the blatant cancel culture, or the celebration of nonchalance culture. 

When we start to hold everyone else to be on the same emotional standard and understanding as we are- to also posses the ‘same level of EQ’, to be able to ‘fully-healed’ from their trauma, to express themselves fully with transparency- we will only get disappointment in the end. Because by then, we’ll realise that everyone has different journey and pace, and that we’ll always be alone overseeing from the top of the mountain. We can’t force anyone to ‘be healed’, be wise, and be understanding, when they themselves are still struggling surviving against the battles that no one knows, when they haven’t known what it is to love and to be loved without conditions. And this frustration is what lead us to resort to detaching ourself fully from the person. As we’re afraid that by staying longer, we’ll also be exposed to our old scars and intrusive thoughts that we have long buried inside ourselves. 

The last time, I joined a workshop by a doctoral psychologist from Indonesia, who is currently doing his post-doc in Japan, to understand more about different kind of attachment in interpersonal relations. He kept emphasising that what we need to strive for is to build our self-awareness, while still giving grace to others who are still in the processing phase. The goal is not to find other person who is ‘as secured’ as us, but to be aware of how they are as human beings, and to act in the best way to provide comfort space for each other together. It is to grow together, rather than to policing one another. 

By any means, I am not encouraging you to stay in the destructive friendship/relationship and be oblivious of the harms they are causing to you mentally/physically. But what I want to delineate is that, we should stay firm in our own journey and be introspective of our own actions, while also giving others the grace in their own journey. 

The goal is not to build a tall impermeable walls around us to protect our ‘peace’, but it is to nurture our own garden with strong roots and foundation, so that no matter how harsh the rain and disaster that befall us, we’ll be able to flourish again when the sun comes out. 

It is to give room for people to be ‘human’ again. 

We can only pour love to others from a place of abundance, not from a place of lacking and fear. We can stay firm and secured of ourselves, if we allow ourselves to embrace our own, and others’ imperfection. We can avoid confusing detachment with regulation and control, if we ‘humanise’ ourselves and those around us. 

When we make peace with the fact that imperfection will always be a part of us, we make room for genuine connection to flourish, we allow two souls to come together to share the comfort, and we allow vulnerability and transparency to be something sacred, not scary. 

After all, it is okay to struggle, it is okay to be in process, and it is okay to not be okay,

because we are all just human being living for the first time in this finite lifetime (:

bgm - alone by 임채원 

(writings prompted after reading this amazing post)

love, 

heba 

15.12.25

22:14, paris