Wonder if any of you ever had the feeling
that life is bad, real bad,…and you wish you were in another situation. Do you
find that life seems to make things difficult for you, work sucks, life sucks,
everything seems to go wrong….
It was not until yesterday that I totally
changed my views about life; after a conversation with one of my friends.
He told me despite taking 2 jobs, and
bringing back barely above 1K per month, he is happy as he is. I wonder how he
can be as happy as he is now, considering that he has to skimp his life with
the low pay to support a pair of old-age parents, in-laws, wife, 2 daughters
and the many bills of a household.
He explained that it was through one incident
that he saw in India……
That happened a few years ago when he was
really feeling low and was touring India after a major setback. He said that
right in front of his very eyes, he saw an Indian mother chopped off her
child’s right hand with a chopper. The helplessness in the mother’s eyes, the
scream of the pain from the innocent 4 years old child haunted him until today.
You may ask why did the mother do so, has the child been naughty, was the
child’s hand infected??
No, it was done for two simple words — to
beg. The desperate mother deliberately caused the child to be handicapped so
that the child can go out to the streets to beg. I cannot accept how this could
happen, but it really did, just in another part of the world which I don’t see.
Taken aback by the scene, he dropped a small
piece of bread he was eating half-way. And almost instantly, flock of 5 or 6
children swamp towards this small piece of bread which was then covered with
sand, robbing of bits from one another. The natural reaction of hunger. Striken
by the happenings, he instructed his guide to drive him to the nearest bakery.
He arrived at two bakeries and bought every single loaf of bread he found in
the bakeries.
The owner is dumbfolded , but willing sold
everything. He spent less than $100 to obtain about 400 loaf of bread (this is
less than $0.25/per loaf) and spend another $100 to get daily necessities. Off
he went in the truck full of bread into the streets. As he distributed the
bread and necessities to the children (mostly handicapped) and a few adults, he
received cheers and bows from these unfortunate. For the first time in life he
wonder how people can give up their dignity for a loaf of bread which cost less
than $0.25. He began to ask himself how fortunate he is as a Singaporean. How
fortunate he to be able to have a complete body, have a job, have a family,
have the chance to complain what food is nice what isn’t, have the chance to be
clothed, have the many things that these people in front of him are deprived
of…..
Now I begin to think and feel it, too. Was my
life really that bad?
Perhaps….no,… it should not be bad at all….
What about you? Maybe the next time you think
you are, think about the child who lost one hand to beg on the streets.
Story By Wendy Tan
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