Dismissed

(photo: caitanya.org)

                                                               

He was dozing off inside a waiting shed. His clothes were unkempt and dirty, his hair was greasily long, lined with grays and he was holding some empty plastic bottles... In short, he was the stereotyped street person.

You remembered the time when he was still young. He would frequent gambling areas and would mutter sentences in English. He would converse to students who pass by as if to assess their knowledge gained in school. Others would always laugh at him back then... He was considered as a joke.

Now, lots consider him as an inevitable fact in your midst...

You have always been an underdog. When you were in high school, you could never be considered as part of the IN crowd for you'd rather read than go out on the streets. Besides, your mother would not allow you to discover the dark secrets of the streets... You would always feel being outside of the picture those days... That's probably the reason why you have this empathy for the underdogs, the marginalized and the prejudiced.

Yeah, you could blame him for his irresponsibility in handling his wealth way back; you could blame his attitude towards life; his indifference to education; his incapacity to empower himself; his lukewarm treatment of his faith and the like... but could that solve his PRESENT? If you would remind him of those wasted time and resources, could it clothe and feed him?

There are things that we have to consider. These days, we live our lives so fast to cope with the pressing demands of times. We want our internet connections to have that speed similar to the speed  of light, we want to fill in every minute with something that could entertain us, we dislike the word boredom, we like fast vehicles. The person dozing inside a shed must not bother our need to run. Then, one could ask: Why are we running? What's the reason why we always have this urge to be on the fast lane?

Then we point fingers. We find scapegoats. We don't want to be responsible of anything. We blame the government. We blame the local officials. We even blame the weather...

Yes. Sometimes it's easy to talk about these things. You need to pair this complaints with the right action for these would all become blah. Because, as a responsible member of the society, a valid action must be done. You could visit the social welfare officer and ask for help...

Or, you might as well tag along Dodong the barber to give that man a haircut.