Friday, July 1, 2011

Looking out the Window

Everyday I see people forcing a smile in their face as they pass each window car in the traffic light. Most people would just wave away those people away from their cars. Sometime, I did that too. Ignoring the obvious pain that they are experiencing. Little did we know and little did we care about the sadness that lies beneath those face. We veiled ourselves from seeing the reflection of misery through their eyes. We seems to overlook the imprinted sweat in their shirts. And so my heart grief for humanity for there is no more decency that could be found among us. 

I was in my car when I realize the sadness in people's eyes and how they are just plainly trying to survive life. It moves me to see how people are forced to be in a situation that they are in now just because they have no other options. They've tried but nothing seems to work and now they just live to work day by day hoping that someday this might all be better. 

This remind me of an excerpt from the Life of Pi by Yann Martel. "The life of wild animal is simple, noble, and meaningful. Then it is captures by wicked men and thrown into ring jails. Its "happiness" is dashed. It yearns mightily for 'freedom' and does all it can to escape. Being denied its 'freedom' for too long, the animal becomes a shadow of itself, its spirit broken."

Pardon the comparison, but it is true. People's happiness are constantly taken away from them. Happiness might now just be a memory.  Before they work for the community. Before they have no problem in fulfilling their families needs. Before everything is working well. Before they were happy... People are forced into labors because they are trap in the world where money comes first. In fact, we all are trap in a materialistic world. 

 

Is money wrong? No...I guess it's our fault for letting it goes too far. But let's not give up on faith, there's still tomorrow to hope for. We might not be able to do any sort of big things right now, but we live and we learn to fix the problem that we've created so that tomorrow will be a better day especially for them.


From the other side of the window,

ALJ

2 comments:

  1. While that may be true, mankind has improved along the course of time, have you ever seen Hans Rosling's Humanity Statistics? these statistics show humanity's health and economic growth from several hundred years ago. People doesn't choose (they couldn't) to be born into that condition, and they have very little tools to improve themselves compared some people. But their conditions overall have improved, and the best thing about happiness, or well-being if you will (or even eudaimonia) most contemporary thinker agree they do not relate much to monetary conditions, you can be happy even if you're poor. Happiness aren't taken from them, rather happiness haven't been given to them yet.
    And then there's interesting excerpts about human-animal comparison, have you heard about the Diogenes of Sinope? This guy is a cynic philosopher, this guy quite literally rejects material comfort (he also taught cynicism by living example earning him the title Diogenes the Dog because of his carefree and obscene personality), but living worse than a begger he lived as a famous greek phlosopher nevertheless.
    As for money, in my opinion I wouldn't say human problem is rooted in money itself, money like anything else could be used in myriad ways that attributing 'good' or 'bad' to the concept money is useless, by analogy it is as useless as attributing how a hand is 'good' 'bad' 'useless' 'useful' 'destructive' etc. What has to be concerned of is the human itself, more specifically their minds, we should rather focus on education, re-educate parents...... I see I've gone overboard, pardon my habit, it was exciting as I am interested in what's inside my friend's minds (like most people I suppose[?]) I thank you for your patience if you've read until this point.

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  2. Okay seriously I didn't expect for my nearly incoherent babbling to be that long, forgive my enthusiasm.

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