'Act of Living Together'

Martin Luther King wrote:
“We have learnt to fly in the air like birds and to swim in the sea like fish
But we have not learned the simple act of living together.”

How truly had he expressed a universal truth! Man is said to be a social animal. But we have, on the whole, not formed true societies. A society doesn’t simply mean a group staying together; rather it should be taken to mean the persons living together. Now what we need to look at is: What is the actual import of the words – “living together”? The implication is not only confined to the physical sense, but also the psycho-emotional act of living together, that is to say, there are a few ‘strings attached’. It is tragic for the human race that man has achieved everything he had never ever dreamt of and is striving to do even more but man has not been human at all. “It is the human heart by which we live”, that makes us humans and our physical structure.
Wordsworth has beautifully expressed in his Ode ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’
“Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

This is what a thinking and a loving heart is, a heart that is alive and living. And this is how we will be able to put ourselves together and learn “the simple act of living together”.