How is Krishna not attached to anything and yet so decisive? He will not be shaken by the Chirharan of Draupadi or the Lakshagraha episode or by the death of Abhimanyu. Not so that he will not be affected, but he will be able to maintain his equanimity so that he may take action at an appropriate time. It is because his focus is always on the larger. Krishna is omniscient, and he knows the past as well as the future and is therefore able to connect the dots. He can see that post-Kurukshetra, the rule of Dharma will be established. What about the ordinary human beings, who are not that aware? How can they stay calm in tough situations? How can they not get fixated? How can Bhima not get so agitated with the insult to Draupadi as to take a vow to kill Dushasana and drink the blood from his chest?

But will Bhima be so agitated when Duryodhana does the same thing with any other woman? When Arjuna is thinking of running away from the battlefield after looking at Bhishma and Drona fighting from the other side, would he pass through the same conflict had his elders not been fighting from the opposite side? No. Why? In our childhood, all of us were very sensitive, and if we saw foul behaviour by any person in society, we would get disturbed. The death of any person in the neighbourhood would be equally painful. As we grow, we start becoming insensitive to a lot of things. We would like our home to be neat and clean, but we will be quite insensitive to the filthy roads. 

Why do we grow that insensitive? Because of learned helplessness. We have seen so many problems around us since our childhood. We try to stand up for a few. We try to fight the contractor building the road, and try to take up the issue of poor teaching pedagogy with the school principal, to argue with the parents when they say something bad about a relative on his back, but slowly survival instinct takes over and sensitivity dies. We realise that we can’t change the people around us. We can’t change the ecosystem. Since we have to survive in the same ecosystem, we learn to close our eyes selectively. 

As we grow old, we become champions of selective sensitivity. What happens in other countries, states, and even cities does not affect us since we feel that we are not being adversely impacted by the same. But since we numb our sensitivity to so many things, we become oversensitive towards a few of them. We become very touchy about anything and everything we identify with, be it self-image, material possessions, or belief system. As this disease goes to the next level, we start becoming aggressive in debates and discussions. We cut ourselves off from the people who do not endorse our views. 

What’s the solution? There is no easy or quick solution. Selective sensitivity makes us blind towards a lot of things and perspectives. That’s why the solution lies in opening our eyes to the whole. Obviously, that’s painful in the beginning. Krishna would have easily sat comfortably in Dwarka. He had no need to be sensitive to the injustice done to the Pandavas. So many other kingdoms kept themselves away from the internal matters of Hastinapur. But in that case, Krishna would not have been Krishna. Krishna was fully sensitive to what was going on in Hastinapur. But at the same time, he is completely cool and calm because he can see how things fit into a larger frame. Sensitivity without wisdom is a curse. We need to stay aware, completely aware, to have that wisdom because wisdom comes with the awareness of the larger frame of life.