Had an epiphany of sorts, during my daily morning readings today. (Nothing groundbreaking, and may look too simplistic to some.)
Being a finance person, I've been aware of the concept of fungibility since a few years now. Basically, as I understand it, fungibility means that any random unit of a certain thing is exactly equal in value to any other random unit. Money is the most common thing described as fungible, since a note or coin of, say, ten rupees is exactly equal in value to any other of ten rupees. (This doesn't consider the practices of collectors, who fondly collect notes or, more typically, coins of a certain vintage, which actually gain in value over time, regardless of their underlying value which the Governor of Reserve Bank of India "Promise(s) to pay the bearer...' as printed on the note!)
The concept of fungibility has further come into prominence in recent years in the digital realm, specifically in the context of digital 'currencies' (recognised vor not) and 'tokens'. Technically, all digital 'currencies' like Bitcoin and Ethereum are what is known as 'tokens', and one unit of, say, Bitcoin floating around anywhere in cyberspace is supposed to be equal in value to any other unit of Bitcoin stored or traded anywhere else, the value itself being arrived at through a complicated process, not relevant for our discussion here. On the other side are NFTs, or Non Fungible Tokens. These are supposed to be unique, typically representing something in real world, for instance a shoe or a song or a photo, usually with some unique identifier. As such, these are 'non fungible', that is, no two units of the specific token is an exact substitute of any other.
Coming back to our core discussion after this lengthy detour, wouldn't it be helpful if we could consider our relationships with others also as 'fungible'? Say, someone could have slighted us or even harmed us in some way in the past. Typically, we carry around that hurt for years, sometimes our while life, even as we may realise that this actually harms us only and possibly restrains our development, without the object of our hate being even aware of it. In such a scenario, couldn't we instead think back to the behaviour of another person who would've done us some good (and, if we think sincerely, most of us can surely find a person or persons to whom we should be grateful to).
So, if we follow the concept of fungibility, can't we treat the behaviour of our do-gooder as an exact substitute for that of our supposed 'enemy'? (This may also be in line with the traditional Indian ethos of वसुधैव कुटुंबकम् or 'the world is our family'.) Once we're able to do that, we should be on our way to release the negative energy trapped in our feelings of hurt, letting our psyche fly higher to the realm of wholesomeness.
This could possibly also be applied to our own behaviour towards others. But perhaps that's another discussion.
Something to think about...
