friendship

To Be or Not to Be (Friends With a Bigot)

Jon Stewart puts it bluntly, ‘If you’re a friend of a bigot, you’re a bigot.’

In Season 6 of the award-winning TV series, Homeland (2011-2020), a Jewish American, Saul Berenson (played by Mandy Patinkin) visits his sister, Dorit, (Jacqueline Antaramian) in Israel. Dorit is a settler and a Zionist. Saul is not.

The two sit and reminisce about happier times. The conversation then veers towards Dorit’s deceased husband, Moishe, who decided to build their house on the very edge of the West Bank overlooking an Arab ghetto. The exchange goes something like this:

Dorit: Moishe chose this spot so that the Arabs could see us every day and know we’re never leaving.

Saul: Moishe and I saw things differently.

Dorit: He was my husband. You could have tried to understand his point of view.

Saul: Did he try to understand mine?

Dorit: You could have bent a little for my sake

Saul: There’s no bending with a fanatic. (Long pause) After you met him, you changed.

Dorit: Moishe opened my eyes to the false life that mother and father had us living. Exchanging Christmas presents with the neighbours, doing everything we could not to offend anyone with our Jewishness. Moishe made me proud to be a Jew.

Saul: He turned you against your family. He brought you to live in a place (Israel) that’s not yours, where you don’t belong! … Haven’t you driven enough people from their homes already? Bulldozed their villages, seized their properties under laws they had no part in making?

Dorit: You don’t understand, Saul, you never have. I love the life that God has given me!

Saul: How can you love making enemies? How can you live knowing that your very presence here makes peace less possible?

The conversation then takes a turn.

Dorit: I have a family, a community, a life filled with faith and purpose. Saul, what do you have??

The question catches Saul off guard. It’s a low blow, for Dorit knows Saul is struggling in his personal life and has just been through a bitter divorce.

The scene is pertinent in more ways than one. Not just because of its ongoing relevance to the ever-worsening Jewish-Arab conflict and the genocide in Gaza, but also because of its resonance with so many who have lost friendships and close relationships to political polarisation and the bigotry encouraged by deeply divisive figures in positions of power.

If there is one thing those standing against hate have had to learn, it is the truth of Saul’s words, “There’s no bending with a fanatic.”

Sticking to one’s convictions is not easy, because no one likes losing friends. But how does one have close relations with bigots, supporters of genocide, or those who simply refuse to use their critical faculties to question hate-filled propaganda? Does one step away from those whose values are at loggerheads with one’s own and walk a lonelier road? Or does one ‘compromise’ for the sake of friendship and companionship?

Dorit clearly considers her life superior to her brother’s when she asks him:

“I have a family, a community, a life filled with faith and purpose, Saul, what do you have??”

A family, a community and a life filled with faith and purpose all sound like wonderful things on the face of it, but Dorit’s declaration begs a little scrutiny. What kind of family and community is it? An inclusive and kind one? Or an insular and bigoted one?

Also, faith in who or what? The return of past greatness and glory (that never quite existed)? A despot promising the same?

And, what kind of purpose? A benevolent one based on the values of kindness, trust and large-heartedness? Or a malevolent one predicated on hating ‘the other’?

Author and activist Ijeoma Oluo expressed it well when she said, “We cannot be friends with those who actively support oppression and hate. Friendship requires a certain level of integrity.”

Or as comedian Jon Stewart puts it more bluntly, “If you’re a friend of a bigot, you’re a bigot.”

It is difficult and complicated to create distance from those we have been close to. But if those friendships have now become toxic because of bigotry, then we most likely do well to walk away from them. Our future selves will thank us for it.

Rohit Kumar is an educator, author, and independent journalist, and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

Obituary: The Pakistani Peace Activist Who Carried My Grandfather’s Ashes Across Wagah

Karamat Ali (19 August 1945 – 20 June 2024) had this ability to make possible what was impossible – with gentleness, humour and compassion, and a smile that will be greatly missed.

A personal tribute to Karamat Ali (19 August 1945 – 20 June 2024)

Karamat Ali was many things but for me he was always the person who returned my grandfather Kuldip Nayar to the home he was born in. The relationship between him and my grandfather defies labels but it has a bond that is deep and unbreakable, stronger than many relationships with names.

There are many words for friendship. Arabic has twelve. You can choose from friendships of different shades – the intense saqeeb, a true friend; sameer, someone who you like to have a conversation with; or the casual zameel, an acquaintance.

English has just the one – a bland friend. The short dost (friend) in Hindustani encompasses in its tiny frame a sort of bro-code for the intense relationship that Hindi film songs refer to, between Maana Dey’s ‘Yaari hai Imaan’ (My friend is my faith) to Sholay’s anthem ‘Yeh Dosti Hum Nahi’ (This friendship we will never abandon).

‘Dost’

So I struggle to find a word to describe the relationship between Karamat Ali, labour leader, peace activist, revolutionary, lover of music, and my grandfather Kuldip Nayar, journalist, peace-activist and fellow dreamer. And by extension, my relationship with Karamat Sahib.

This relationship without a name has a bond that is deep and unbreakable, stronger than many relationships with names.

Karamat Ali holds friend M. Tahseen in headlock, surrounded by other comrades. Photo: Sapan News.

Karamat Ali and Anita Ghulam Ali. Photo: Sapan News.

Mahesh Bhatt and Karamat Ali. Photo: Sapan News.

Karamat Ali was many things but for me he was always the person who returned my grandfather to the home he was born in.

“He put my hand on my shoulder and told me that like Nirmala Didi, he too, wanted his ashes to be immersed on both sides,’’ said Karamat Sahib when I met him in Delhi in 2018. He was referring to Nirmala Deshpande, a Gandhian who spent her life advocating for peace. Karamat Sahib had scattered her ashes on the Indus too.

This was a few weeks after my grandfather had missed his annual visit to the Wagah border to light candles on the anniversary of Pakistan and India’s independence from the British in 1947. He had instead passed away in a hospital.

“So, I will take him back,’’ Karamat told me.

It was just that simple. In 2008, Karamat Sahib had come to India and taken a part of what remained of Nirmala Didi with him back to Pakistan. There, he led a delegation that immersed the ashes of Nirmala Deshpande, Gandhian and peace activist, in the Indus near the Sadhu Bela temple at Sukkur in Sindh.

But by 2018 things were different. A great frost had settled in the relationship between the two countries from 2015 with no thaw. There were no visas for Pakistanis. Even letters even with the right stamp didn’t reach. Finding a way to send a tiny portion of my grandfather’s ashes across to Pakistan seemed like an impossibility.

Karamat (left) as Kuldip Nayar’s ashes are immersed in the Ravi, 2018. Photo: Sapan News.

Without knowing that my grandfather had expressed this wish, I had taken upon myself this wild task to avoid dealing with his passing.

Karamat Sahib had appeared, almost by magic on rare reprieve, as if this had been the purpose of his travel instead of attending a conference on fishermen.

We asked if he wanted us to drop the ashes to him in the morning – most people would not want to spend the night with ashes in their room. Karamat Sahib said he could use the company. He kept the urn with my grandfather’s ashes in his room for a night till he crossed back to Pakistan. I often think that they must have had a lot to catch up on.

My grandfather’s journey across Wagah is a story I have heard Karamat Sahib narrate many times. As I write, I can hear his raspy voice recount it to me, as he did when I joined him for the immersion of Kuldip Nayar’s ashes.

At the Wagah border crossing, he placed the urn on the desk of the immigration officer. When the officer asked him what was in the container and if he had permission, he replied: “Yeh Kuldip Nayar Sahib hain. Aapne watan waapis laut rahe hain.” (This is Mr Kuldip Nayar. He is returning home). He doesn’t need a visa.’’

With that, he walked past the counter to the other side.

A dream

Karamat Sahib had this ability to make possible what was impossible – with gentleness, humour and compassion, and a smile that will be greatly missed.

He started young. Born in Multan in 1945, he was only 17 when he cut his teeth in student politics. It was 1962 and General Ayub Khan’s government had banned student unions. Students from Karachi including Mairaj Muhammed Khan and Syed Ali Mukhtar Rizvi, were expelled and turned to Multan for refuge.

Karamat Sahib led the students in a huge procession to the commissioner of Multan’s office and organised a sit-in there. The commissioner listened and allowed the expelled students to stay in Multan, giving Karamat Sahib his first taste of a win.

Karamat Ali, the labour leader. Collage by K.B. Abro; Sapan News.

Twenty years later, he founded the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler).

“Back in those days, Piler was a dream for him, which he carried around in his briefcase,” said economist Kaiser Bengali at a meeting organised by the Arts Council of Pakistan in memory of Karamat Sahib this week.

“When he was getting the funding to establish Piler, the people from the organisation who had brought the cheques said that they had an issue with the communist leaders he idolised, and instead of agreeing with them in order to take the money from them, he simply asked them to take their money back. He was honest and unwilling to part with his beliefs and principles,” said Bengali.

His house was filled with books, he danced well and he wrote poetry. “But he never let the romantic side overpower his revolutionary side. He also had the power of convincing and boldness, patience and tact to sit on the same table for dialogue with the worst of adversaries,” said Arts Council of Pakistan president Ahmed Shah at the memorial meeting.

When workers in Rana Plaza, Bangladesh and at garment factories in Karachi were burnt alive, Karamat Sahib led an initiative to hold states, corporations and buying agents to account.

“He built a case for reparations for the labouring families,’’ said activist Navsharan Kaur was quoted in an Indian newspaper saying. “The work inspired many actions.

Karamat Sahib was the force behind Jawad Ahmed’s song ‘Sun Lo Kay Hum Mazdoor Hain’ (Hear Us, For We are Workers).

When planning to go to Pakistan for as part of a delegation from India laying the foundation stone of the Kartarpur visa-free corridor in early 2019, I called Karamat Sahab to ask if I could get him anything from Delhi. He asked for homoeopathic medication for his friend – a medicine that had worked wonders for Karamat Sahib, and wasn’t available in Karachi.

For Karamat Sahib, all roads were paved with friendship.

Mandira Nayar is a journalist with over two decades of extensive reporting experience from across South Asia, and was until recently deputy chief of bureau at The Week based in Delhi. A Charles Wallace scholar, she has been the chronicler of tiny details and people who are footnotes in history. She earlier worked for The Hindu and The Telegraph. She is a founding member of the Southasia Peace Action Network (Sapan).

This is a Sapan News syndicated feature.

‘Gehraiyaan’ Is About Friends, Relationships and Secrets

Shakun Batra’s ‘Gehraiyaan’ is a drama that, unlike its protagonists, is comfortable in its own skin. It moves along smoothly but fumbles towards the end.

An early scene in Shakun Batra’s Gehraiyaan – lasting for not more than a few seconds – encapsulates its whole essence. True to the film, it’s a story-within-a-story. Its protagonist, Alisha (Deepika Padukone), is watching an old home video. It’s a scene from a family vacation, where she recognises something familiar: her pre-teen-self trying to wear a sweater – it gets stuck in her neck and covers her head. Alisha can’t see or breathe; she tells her mother that she’s “suffocating”. That feeling – of being stuck and stifled, originating from her childhood – has hounded her all her life.

Her mother used to speak about the same feeling; she hung herself from the ceiling fan (suffocating herself further) when the pain became unbearable. Like many children of discontent parents, Alisha fears her ultimate fate: that she, too, will become like them, that she, too, will not be able to escape their history. It is even more difficult for her, as she literally lives with her past.

Growing up in Mumbai for a few years, she had befriended Karan (Dhairya Karwa) and Tia (Ananya Pandey). Karan, a former ad writer now working on a book (noob move), he has been dating, and living with Alisha for the last six years. Caught up in his own world, he is absent-minded and negligent. Alisha, a yoga instructor, has been struggling to raise funds for her mobile app. She avoids her father, blaming him for her mother’s death. The sweater has stuck again: She feels “suffocated”.

But she reconnects with Tia, and the childhood troika takes a vacation. This time, there’s a new member: her fiancé, Zain (Siddhant Chaturvedi). Alisha realises in some time that Zain, carrying his own past scars, isn’t too different from her. Like Alisha, he couldn’t save his mother. Unlike Tia and Karan, he’s not from a well-adjusted family – he’s not ‘normal’. In the sea of flickering and cold tube lights, Zain is a warm glowing bulb: someone who has been there, someone who gets it. They chat, drink, and share stories. They banter, flirt, and hook up. The sweater has, finally, begun to loosen. Alisha can, at last, breathe.

Gehraiyaan, streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is a drama that, unlike its protagonists, is comfortable in its own skin. A movie about chaotic characters and conflicting feelings, it unfolds with admirable simplicity. It simmers at the right pace, and even when it starts to boil, that transformation feels natural – even expected. Like Kapoor & Sons – Batra’s last directorial, the best Hindi film of 2016 – Gehraiyaan makes its backstories trickle. Sometimes we see fleeting flashbacks; sometimes characters in the present reference their pasts. These nuggets are carefully sprinkled – resulting in an evolving story – creating a sobering effect: it feels like we’re growing with the characters. But increased knowledge doesn’t always lead to increased fondness – sometimes the more we know about these people, the less we like them. This fascinating interplay between awareness and confusion makes perfect sense, for it exemplifies the film’s most memorable layer: that Alisha, fixated on finding and moulding her story, is living a lie.

Also read: Book Review: How the Indian State Created a ‘Brand Image’ to Generate Investments

These dualities find an able companion in Batra: a ‘light’ filmmaker who gravitates towards deep subjects. This relaxed approach is most evident in the initial portions of the movie, where the characters, holidaying in an Alibaug villa, are getting to know each other. The conversations have a distinct life-like rhythm; the dialogues sound real. The performances are so natural that you feel like a fly-on-the-wall – not one muscle strained, not one meaning imposed. Unlike Imtiaz Ali – and numerous other Bollywood directors depicting modern Indian romance – Batra truly gets it. Alisha and Zain, for instance, take their time. It’s not just physical attraction. They talk work, they unwind; they initiate a carnal contact, then recede. There’s a lot going on here – desire, confusion, guilt – and Chaturvedi and Padukone’s excellent chemistry teases out every strand. Almost nothing in Gehraiyaan just happens – there are build-ups, acts, aftermaths – and, as a result, we don’t just get the sense of watching a story but embracing it.

The production design heightens the considered realism, spanning a vast range of settings, from luxurious villas and yachts to modest apartments, emphasising the various divides, including class, between Alisha and others. Unlike many Bollywood friendships, Gehraiyaan doesn’t treat the unit as one solid entity. Crucial differences set them apart – and those differences matter. Tia and Karan went to the US to study, but Alisha, not as affluent as them, stayed in India, unable to escape once more. Due to their much cleaner pasts, Karan and Tia are more close to each other; Alisha feels like an “outsider”. It’s a nuanced take on contemporary friendship, where many mini-stories live in a story, where heroes and sidekicks swap bodies.

This method exists for a reason. If Alisha’s arc asks the question ‘how much do you know your family?’ then Tia’s secrets posit a fascinating counterpart: How much do you know your friends? In Gehraiyaan, self-preservation is an eternal season. The writing brings it out beautifully through Zain, a man who lives and romances like an opaque-faced poker player. Many films would have softened his edge, tried to make him more ‘likeable’. But Batra doesn’t cushion his ‘anti-hero’. He even looks fine for the most part – a great example of deceptive perspectives and their immersive power – for we feel exactly like Alisha. Like her, even we start to believe a lie. In a chilling scene, he commits a grave mistake, gaslights her, and she apologises. It’s a memorable scene on its own, but it’s also an understated commentary on gendered coping mechanisms: the man burns the world; the woman burns herself.

The narrative circularity unfolds at several levels. There’s of course an obvious ‘suffocating’ parallel between Alisha and her mother, but the writing dives deep, drawing powerful similarities between her relationships with Zain and Karan, between Zain’s present and past, between Zain and Tia’s family (they treat him less like a prospective son-in-law and more like their employee; he returns the favour by considering them business investors). The subterranean through-line connecting Alisha and her mother sharpens in the subsequent portions: the impulses to trust, pursue an impossible romance, accelerate towards self-sabotage.

While watching Gehraiyaan, I was compelled to wonder, more than once, that Batra may have peaked a bit too early with his last film. Flashes of Kapoor & Sons kept coming back to me, for the two films share striking commonalities: a ravaged past, scattered secrets, marital and filial discord (even the character’s occupations, novelists). But unlike Kapoor & Sons, which had a consistent piercing quality (I remember tearing up in the theatre more than once), Gehraiyaan is less moving. Which by itself is not a problem, different subjects demand different tones. But unlike his last, Batra’s latest stumbles in its final few steps.

The sloppiness of two climactic scenes stand out in an otherwise assured drama (don’t worry, no spoilers). Both of them involve Alisha: one is a conversation with Tia, the other with her father (Naseeruddin Shah). These portions verbalise big thematic points (that we already know), feature visual flashbacks (that we have already seen), underscore a straightforward, even a roseate, worldview (that belongs to a different film). Gehraiyaan had shoehorned the ‘stuck’ metaphor earlier as well – via several overt dialogues – but it wasn’t a deal-breaker, as those bits were spread out. These two scenes, however, feel like narrative and expositional dumps, eliciting an unsettling feeling: that the movie maybe running out of ideas.

The writing quickly regains control though, concluding the drama with an economical kicker, tying its disparate strands with a small scene, a conversation between Alisha and a stranger. It’s a classic ‘iceberg’ moment. On the surface is just one question; that old lady has met Alisha before and is trying to recall her name. But beneath the surface – her recognising Alisha will expose her cruel secret – the iceberg keeps growing and gnawing and mocking: You can leave your past, but your past doesn’t leave you.

How Being Called an Introvert Made Me One

Why would someone, who used to love dancing so much, shy away from the same?

When I was seven, I was among the rowdier kids in my class. I remember hitting boys with my water bottle, countering the popular girls of my class, revolting against my girl gang and being thrown out of said gang for being a rebel. There was no regret. For me, my actions were justified.

We had just moved to a new city. A few weeks in, I was invited to a birthday party of a girl who was my age. I remember being very excited because I loved parties and meeting new people.

I got ready and went to the party. There was a DJ – at a seven-year old’s birthday party! I was shocked, but made the most out of it. I did not know a single person there, not even the birthday girl, but I went to the centre and started dancing. I danced as if there was no tomorrow. That’s how I made many new friends.

Three years later, we shifted back to the city where I was born – where most of my relatives lived. I was introduced to a lot of new faces. I think I was overwhelmed. I became unusually quiet. One reason was the language barrier. People around me did not know Hindi, and I knew Hindi better than my mother tongue, the local language of the city.

I made friends, but started to feel shy while talking to them – a new feeling for me. As the years went by, I became more and more reserved.

Throughout those years, my relatives and friends would repeatedly ask me questions like “why are you so shy?”, “why are you so quiet?”, “why don’t you talk openly?”

Over time, these questions grew into declarative statements like, “she is a quiet person”, “she is shy”, “she doesn’t prefer to speak much” and “she is very reserved”.

This was the point when I completely shut down. Unknowingly, I put myself in a box where I limited myself to behaving like the labels that people had assigned to me. Every trait or characteristic that people used to describe me fit into the category of being an “introvert”.

Also read: How Theatre Taught an Introvert to Grin and Bare It

So I decided, that was what would define me.

From then on, every time I was asked to describe myself, being an introvert was the first thing to come out of my mouth. I conditioned myself to become an introvert. Readings books extensively, staying indoors, talking less, being reserved, not going to parties, spending alone time – this was all that people saw me do and this was all that I restricted myself to be.

However, at that time, it did not seem like a restriction to me. In my mind, it was just who I was; who I was meant to be. I was okay with being an “introvert”.

I was 18 when I attended my first college fest. On the first day of the fest, there was a DJ and I could see my friends gesturing, indicating I should join them. Every bone in my body was trying its best to pull me to the dance floor. However, the shyness in me took over. It denied my body, which was so eager to join my friends, from dancing.

Later, that night, I introspected that moment. Why would someone, who used to love dancing so much, shy away from the same? How did someone who used to be so rowdy, now be so afraid to voice her thoughts?

Understanding how drastically I has allowed myself to be conditioned by how others viewed me, I realised how much I had been missing out on.

That very night, I decided that I did not want to live in the same old box. In fact, I did not want to restrict myself in any box or label. I was determined to explore my true self.

There was a DJ night on the third day of the fest. This time, I went to the dance floor and let loose. My friends were shocked to see me dance so freely and wildly.

It came as a surprise to me as well. I did not know I had a wild being inside of me, waiting to be unleashed.

Santhoshi Bhadri is a second year psychology student at Amity University, Mumbai.

The Illusion of a Perfect Holiday Season

Take a step back and see what this season really means to you.

Trigger warning: Please note that the following article contains content about childhood trauma, dysfunctional families and social anxiety.

Sometimes, living or merely existing in itself can be an act of courage. Period.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I am 22-year old hopeless rom-com enthusiast. The moment the month of December begins, you will find me overdosing on hot chocolate, humming Frank Sinatra songs, looking for the fragrance of Viburnum, or well, excitedly convincing someone about how December is the best month of the year.

But here’s also something I can personally vouch for: despite having a job I love, a beautiful family, friends that care, and surprisingly decent mental health, it can get terribly lonely at times.This can be a phase for some, a particularly horrible day for others, and for many of us, the majority of our lives.

Beyond anxiety, what any festival can also tend to do is propagate this conventional idea of a ‘perfect holiday’ or even worse, a ‘perfect family’. One of the therapists that I absolutely adore and follow once stated, “Biology is an indicator of genetic ties, not of healthy relationships.”

This, in my opinion, is a healthy and essential reminder for all of us. It’s okay to draw boundaries and detach yourself from toxic people even if they are genetically related to you. The process will require you to create a family of loving people or find a community among people who love you and understand you. This can be people who are healing (just like you), or people who don’t see your boundaries or need for space as selfish. This can involve finding a role model outside your family. This can mean creating your own holiday traditions.

This can mean anything that brings you joy, that’s all that should matter.

This brings me to my next essential reminder: If social media is triggering any negative emotions or anxiety in you, it is okay to uninstall and disconnect for a while. I have always believed that while social media can be toxic if we were all a little more empathetic and kinder, the internet can also be the biggest blessing we have in this battle of feeling less alone.

Take a step back and see what this season really means to you. The only point of the holiday season should be to hold the strongest power of the human race, humanity. The act and reminder that love, in some form, exists somewhere all the time. Call up an old friend. Give notes, balloons, or flowers to random strangers. Acknowledge and spread the joy. As repetitive as this might sound, practice gratitude. Contrary to popular belief, it takes conscious efforts to feel gratitude. Make a list of things that you feel gratitude for. Remind yourself about this list every now and then.

Practice the five senses technique, whenever you feel anxious, divert your attention to your five senses. List five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and the one thing you can taste. This can create self-awareness and help you feel present at the moment. Remember that there is no pressure on you to have fun or have someone else’s idea of fun.

I have always witnessed that our past can make us feel like we deserve the unhappiness that comes our way. I have pushed people I love and adore just because I let my anxiety get the better of me. Trust me when I say this, someone might have pushed you away because of the same. It’s human to feel like you’re not good enough. It’s not often that you find people who get you, support you, and truly want to see you learn and grow.

So, when you do find these people, cherish them. But beyond that, try to be that person for someone. Keep an eye out for your friends and acquaintances who are having a hard time. Reach out, if need be.

My note of love and hope, however, is for each one of us, despite all our vividness and complexity, here’s a quick reminder: You deserve all the love, care, and attention in the world. This goes out to people who are battling mental illness during holidays, people feeling lonely, people who are physically ill or distressed, people who are caretakers, people who are broke, people who are forgotten, people who feel like giving up or starting fresh, people who are grieving, or just people who aren’t able to fight their anxiety.

Each one of you is special, you’re doing what you can to get where you want to. You’re learning, unlearning, and growing every, single day and that’s an act of courage too. I am proud of you.

B.S. Bhuveneswari is a marketer, feminist writer, and a mental health advocate in progress based out of Mumbai. She is looking to build a world sans hatred and violence, tell stories, and hopefully someday, put a ding in the universe.

Featured image credit: T. Rampersad/Unsplash

Why Teens Feel Better When They Help Others

Psychology researchers found that daily acts of kindness were linked to increases in positive mood – especially for teens who felt depressed.

Think about the last time you helped someone out. Maybe you sent a supportive text to a stressed-out friend or gave directions to a lost stranger.

How did it make you feel?

If you said good, happy or maybe even “warm and fuzzy,” you’re not alone. Research shows that helping others offers a number of important psychological and health benefits.

In daily life, people report better mood on days that they assist a stranger or offer an empathetic ear to a friend. Adults who volunteer, spend money on others and support their spouses also experience improved well-being and reduced risk of death.

Helping others is beneficial in part because it promotes social closeness and feelings of personal competence.

As a researcher who studies adolescent development, I decided to investigate how all this might play out in teenagers. I’m interested in studying teens’ prosocial behaviour – things like helping, comforting and sharing – in the context of their close relationships. Given that adolescence is a time of heightened emotional intensity, do teens reap mood benefits from helping out others in everyday life?

Teens and depression

Looking back on your own high school years, you might recall feeling intensely anxious about looking cool in front of classmates or being liked by your crush. During adolescence, youth become increasingly preoccupied with the opinions of their peers, including their friends and romantic partners. Indeed, adolescence is a time when experiences of social exclusion or rejection can sting particularly badly.

Depressed adolescents, in addition to feeling hopeless and lacking self-esteem, often respond to social stress with intensified negative emotions. For example, adolescents with major depressive disorder take peer rejection harder than do their healthy peers.The teenage years are also a high-risk time for developing depressive symptoms. Almost 1 in every 11 adolescents and young adults in the US experience a major depressive episode. And, even youth with depressive symptoms who don’t meet criteria for an official diagnosis of depression are at risk for adjustment problems, such as loneliness and romantic relationship difficulties.

If depressed adolescents feel especially bad after negative social encounters, might they feel especially good after positive social encounters? Psychologists know that in general adolescents’ concerns about social approval can make positive interpersonal interactions – like offering a peer support or assistance – all the more rewarding. I wanted to see if that held even for teens who were feeling down.

Did you help someone today?

In our recent study, my colleagues and I examined teenagers’ prosocial behaviour in their everyday interactions with friends and romantic partners. Our goal was to understand whether giving help is particularly mood-enhancing for youth with depressive symptoms.

We recruited 99 late adolescents from the community around us in Los Angeles. Most of them were high school students or recent high school graduates. First we assessed their depressive symptoms in the lab so we could find out how they’d been feeling the prior couple weeks.

Then we asked them to complete ten consecutive days of short surveys at home. Each of the ten days, participants told us whether they helped out their friends or romantic partners – things like doing them a favour or making them feel important. They also reported their own mood.

On days that teens helped their friends or dating partners, they experienced increased positive mood. Even if their mood wasn’t great the day before or if they themselves didn’t receive any social support that day, helping someone else was still related to a boost in their spirits.

But does helping help some teens more than others? The positive effects of day-to-day prosocial behaviour on mood that we saw were strongest for teens with higher levels of depressive symptoms. So youth with elevated emotional distress reaped the greatest mood benefits from lending their peers a helping hand.

While we often talk about the importance of receiving social support when we’re feeling down, these findings highlight the unique value of providing support to others.

Helping others helps yourself

This study provides a glimpse into the potential benefits of help-giving for teens, particularly those experiencing depressive symptoms. Our finding builds upon previous research demonstrating that prosocial behavior is most rewarding for people experiencing social anxiety, neuroticism and body dissatisfaction.

Although we did not test for underlying mechanisms for why this might be, it’s possible that providing help can make individuals feel appreciated by others or promote their sense of purpose and self-esteem. For youth with high levels of social-emotional distress, opportunities to strengthen social connections and feel competent within close relationships might be especially important for improving mood.

Many studies linking prosocial behaviour to mood, ours included, are correlational — we cannot conclude that helping friends or romantic others causes more positive mood. Experimental studies that randomly assign some participants to engage in acts of kindness and others to engage in non-helping social activities will help rule out the possibility that it’s actually positive mood that drives subsequent prosocial behaviour.

It’s also important to keep in mind that very few of our participants were clinically depressed. Research still needs to determine whether prosocial behaviour is similarly linked to positive mood among adolescents with a diagnosed depressive disorder. An interesting question is whether some depressed youth experience emotional “burnout” from very frequent help-giving.

Although the word “adolescence” may conjure up images of reckless teens experiencing interpersonal conflict and emotional turmoil, the adolescent years are a time of great social opportunity and growth. Understanding when, how and why teens behave prosocially – and for whom help-giving most promotes well-being – can contribute to our understanding of adolescent social development.

Hannah L. Schacter, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychology, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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What Goes Into a Toxic Friendship

A poem about toxic friendships.

A recipe for most modern-day friendships:

One or two fatally warm smiles, followed by

Scores of nice bestie selfies with subtle filters

of fakeness,

A pinch of jealousy,

Garnished with fine hints of backbiting,

Served cold with hate.

Mohammad Alishan Jafri is a second-year journalism students at the Delhi School of Journalism. You can read his blog here and find him on Twitter @AsfreeasJafri

Featured image credit: Unsplash

Can We Be Kind By Being Cruel?

Sometimes, the only way to help someone seems to be a cruel or nasty approach – a strategy that may leave the ‘helper’ feeling guilty and wrong.

Imagine that someone you care about is procrastinating in advance of a vital exam. If he fails the test, he will not be able to go to university, an eventuality of major consequence in his life. If positive encouragement doesn’t work, you might reverse strategy, making your friend feel so bad, so worried, so scared, that the only strategy left is that he starts studying like mad.

Sometimes, the only way to help someone seems to be a cruel or nasty approach – a strategy that may leave the ‘helper’ feeling guilty and wrong. Now research from my team at the Liverpool Hope University in the UK sheds light on how the process works.

We typically equate positive emotions with positive consequences, and there’s research to back that up. Numerous studies of interpersonal emotion regulation – how one person can change or influence the emotions of another – emphasise the value of increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative ones. Other studies show that making someone feel badly can be useful: anger is helpful when confronting a cheater, and hurting another’s feelings can give them an edge in a game.

Now, my team has documented the routine use of cruelty for altruistic reasons. To validate the phenomenon, we hypothesised the need for three conditions: the motivation to worsen someone’s mood needs to be altruistic; the negative emotion inflicted on the other person should help them achieve a specific goal; and the person inflicting the pain must feel empathy for the recipient.

To test what we call altruistic affect-worsening, we recruited 140 adults and told them that they were being paired with another, anonymous participant to play a computer game for a possible prize of £50 in Amazon vouchers – though in reality, there was no ‘partner’. Prior to play, participants were asked to read a personal statement ostensibly written by their opponent about a painful romantic breakup. Some participants were told to put themselves in the opponent’s shoes; others were instructed to remain detached, thus manipulating the degree of empathy felt towards the presumed competitor. Participants played one of two video games: in one, Soldier of Fortune, players had to kill as many enemies as possible and the goal was confrontational; in the other, Escape Dead Island, players had to escape a roomful of zombies without being killed, and the goal was one of avoidance.

After practising alone for five minutes, participants were asked to decide how the game should be presented to their opponents. Those who empathised more strongly with their opponents asked the experimenters to make the opponent angry for the confrontational game and fearful for the escape game – both states of mind that would give the opponent a higher shot at winning the prize.

Our study shows that the tendency to make another feel bad to help him succeed is far more prevalent when the provocateur feels empathy. What’s more, and especially surprising, is the finding that use of the technique is not random. In the shoot-’em-up game, empathetic participants chose music and images meant to induce anger; in the zombie game, they chose music and images conducive to fear. In both cases, these effects gave the opponents a boost toward winning.

In short, humans intuitively have an excellent sense of which negative emotion will work best as a motivator. And the participants’ actions were absolutely altruistic: they chose to induce emotions that they knew would be beneficial for their opponents to perform well in the games, while reducing their own chance of a prize.

Many questions still remain: is this process present during childhood and adolescence? If not, what factors contribute to its development? What strategies do people use to worsen others’ moods in real interactions? Our study looked at the phenomenon between strangers, but what happens when the protagonist and the opponent are close friends or family members? Other research suggests that, in that circumstance, the motivation to use the strategy could be even more pronounced. Studies that make use of diaries or videos, meanwhile, can shed light on how altruistic interpersonal affect-worsening operates in real life.

Finally, what are the limits of affect-worsening – and can even the most well-meaning, altruistic person end up doing harm? It might be that being cruel is not necessary, and that we are mistaken to think that the other person needs to feel bad in order to achieve long-term wellbeing. Or it could be that the outcome we want will actually worsen the life of the other person. To return to our opening story, perhaps the friend gets into college after prodding, but finds that college is the wrong path for him. Or perhaps the friend is vulnerable, and the strategy that helps him to achieve a goal also lowers his happiness and self-esteem, and provokes a downward spiral nonetheless.

Even if cruelty is effective, is it really the most effective strategy of all? In our original study, participants did not have the option to induce positive emotions in the ostensible opponent. Thus, we were unable to test if participants who experienced higher empathic concern might have wanted to increase their opponents’ wellbeing by inducing positive or happy emotions instead. Our research continues, but one thing is clear: empathising with others leads not only to help and support but also to cruelty. Only further studies will determine how – and if – cruelty can be effective and non-risky for our loved ones and our friends.

This Idea was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to Aeon. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making, including commissioning or content-approval.

Belén López-Pérez is a lecturer in psychology at Liverpool Hope University in the UK.

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

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The Day We Walked to Saffy’s

I know my most precious friends by the way their laughs curl upwards from the soil of their bellies.

On the day we walked to Saffy’s,
side by side, careful not to touch,
I heard you laugh for the first time.
Really laugh, you know. It felt like a melon
had been burst open by quivering fingernails,
the juice glistening everywhere.

Around us, the trees waved and whispered.
The heat, normally unrelenting, softened a bit;
the cars took the long way around
our space.

I think we both sensed a shared solitude.

Also read: Have You Left the Building?

I know my most precious friends by the way their laughs
curl upwards from the soil of their bellies.
The lightest form of myself emerges in their presence. I am lying
on my back in water, my eyelids coral against the sun.

As I looked at you, heard your laughter touching the skies,
I felt buoyed.
Here is an anchor and a float in one.

To recall this as a “moment”
would be to distort it.

It was the circular settling
of a cat
into a cat-sized patch of sun.

Jayesha Koushik works in the development sector and wants to be a writer when she grows up. Find her on Twitter @jayesha22 and Instagram @jiksawpuzzle

Featured image credit: Ali Yahya/Unsplash

In These Spaces, Bodies Talk

In the liminal spaces between the two withins, bodies talk, through touch, speech, taste and sight.

‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus
Shakespeare missed out a bit, it seems.
We may be a lot, or little
More, or less
Plentiful, or lacking
Happy, or ever searching
All of this may lay within us
But just as much is outside
Within others,
And in the liminal spaces between the two withins

It’s in these spaces, that bodies talk

Through touch, speech, taste, and sight

Even presence.

Ideas form
Love is felt, lost, and rediscovered
Fellowships forged, broken, and reunited
It is within these spaces, that we become

More than us, even if just a bit more.

Or so I think.

You can know more about The Flaky Pastry by checking out @theflaky_pastry on Instagram.

Featured image credit: Alan Lin/Unsplash