We All Have A Whip Of Indifference
Being indifferent to suffering is what dehumanizes the human being. Indifference is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Indifference is not an answer, it is not a beginning; is the end. Therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, since it benefits the aggressor, never his victim, whose pain intensifies when the person feels forgotten.
In many moments of our lives we have surely been able to verify these facts for ourselves. People around us who turned their backs on us, did not feel the slightest empathy or calling themselves “friends”, “partner” and even “family” it seemed that they felt nothing for us. This can be twice as harmful as anything else.
The pain of indifference
Sigmund Freud considered that the opposite of love was not hatred but being indifferent. If we think about it carefully, we could see that love and hate are so intimately linked, that indeed sometimes they even complement each other. While indifference is defined as “that which arouses neither interest nor affection”, hatred according to the dictionary indicates a “dislike and aversion towards some person or thing whose evil is desired”.
But why does it cause us infinitely greater pain, being ignored, or showing no interest in us, rather than the pain of enduring anger or punishment? Perhaps it is because rejection is unbearable to us, because we are beings who want to feel part of a group and, when they ignore us, they are taking us out of it.
Indifference is worse than anger or punishment because there is no response from other people towards us. It is as if they do not care in the least, as if we are worth nothing. This hurts us in the deepest, because the impassivity sometimes even makes us feel that we do not exist for others.
It could be said that this situation is much worse than punishment or that it is the most damaging form of punishment. If we’re not careful, our self-esteem could be terribly damaged. We all know that when self-esteem is on the ground, it is very difficult to raise it again (although not impossible).
The waiting that is cruel
When we wait for a message, a call, an appointment and this wait is prolonged, we feel vulnerable, transparent and alien to affection or interest. Selflessness hurts us and makes us desperate. However, when we hate someone (ex-partner, partner, family member, etc.) perhaps our mind still finds reasons to be aware, to dedicate in part, a small gesture or demonstration of feeling or resentment, but, one shows attention to end.
Indifference when it is real and true, is really cruel, a sterile feeling alien to all the moral principles that are worth preserving. When we verify that in the face of lies, torture, famine and misery, evictions, abuse, damage, suffering, theft, it remains and prevails to be impassive, it is that dangerously the victims of all that pain are being forgotten.
Unquestionably, only those who have suffered indifference, know that it is a deep wound for the heart. That to preserve our own love, it would be good to apply what Amado Nervo wrote: “I love the one who loves me and I forget the one who forgets me.”
Have you ever felt ignored by other people up to this point? How have you reacted and felt when you noticed how they turned their back on you or did not feel or suffer for you?
