I was just watching the news earlier and they reported that ex-president Mubarak is badly bruised up from taking a gross fall in his prison bathroom and you see, all I could think about was ‘Man, that’s gotta suck. I mean, one day you’re president of a country, the other day you’re ousted and they’re reporting you dropping the soap on national television.’ Putting all the political dilemmas aside, the guy’s probably gonna cry for a week over this, it’s one thing taking a fall and a whole other thing having a 70 million haters for audience that won’t let you forget it for as long as you live, it’s gotta be like being stuck on the bleachers in high school for the rest of your life. To make it clear, I’m not pro-Mubarak or anything, the guy was a tyrannical dick and all, but think about it: it’s gotta suck to be him right now.
People are so quick to judge, you know? That whole drill of actually taking the time to put yourself in another’s shoes is not rad these days. Everybody’s cozy in their own little heads and perfectly satisfied about figuring life out and shit, constantly giving people crap over not seeing it the same way they do. They always forget that there’s absolutely no way to be sure whether your way is the right way, or whether there is a right way at all. You just gotta hope it is and take comfort in the fact that it’s a snug fit, at least for you and at least for now.
For instance, there’s this really poor, deaf and dumb vagrant that lodges on the opposite side of the street I live in, and he makes a living selling random merchandise with a sign on top issued from the supposed deaf and dumb organization of the district. My college bus always drops me off where he spreads out the good old money-makers on a blanket, and I regularly gave him the rest of my weekly allowance no matter how much they amounted to because I figured he probably needs them more than I do, making sure to pick up a pack of gum to save him face and ditching before he figures out what’s happening and tries to communicate his gratitude and/or absolute scorn, I never hung around long enough to determine which he goes for. I was shortly caught in the act and called an absolute idiot to fall for a con artist and what not. I stopped giving him money, following the philanthropists’ initiative of calling myself an idiot until one day, I was waiting for the college bus to come and one of the guys at uni who was waiting with me placed the architectural model he made for his midterm project where the poor old guy sits, who went on a theatrical gesturing act worth of auditioning for Cats, moaning unintelligibly to try and tell the guy that he’s sitting in his spot. The guy took him for a maniac, held his model protectively like a newly-born baby, cradling it against his chest safe away from the mad guy who was met by laughter and aggressiveness from all the other two-bit brats that pass for undergraduates. I tried to make the guy understand that he was merely telling him that he was sitting in his work spot and gave him my seat, and the other chicks took the hint and shut the hell up, settling on rolling their eyes back in their hollow excuse of a skull. That’s when it hit me, the guy wasn’t a con-artist, he wasn’t lying because why would he lie when it was too early to sell anything, he hadn’t set out his merchandise and didn’t show any signs of being bothered or remotely alarmed by the deafening noise that drove everybody away from the curb shortly afterwards when one of the air-conditioner ventilation boxes on one of the shops broke down, he was just a guy that fate got on his knees because the country still hasn’t found away to employ the qualified, let alone the under-privileged. I had a lot of respect for him, watching him try to make a good life out of the little he was given, even trying to make it pretty by cleaning the tree pot in front of his spot of cigarette stubs and dusting a 5 metre-radius around the place he’s sitting with his own personal broom, even though he didn’t have to. He was human, and he was trying to make his surrounding as humanly habitable as possible, and that kind of impulse can only be produced by someone who had integrity. That poor old man had a life of his own making, he was proud of it and he wasn’t gonna let life get him without a fight. The next day, I gave him all my money like I used to, I didn’t call myself an idiot for it and I gladly walked home for two hours when I missed the bus later in the day because I didn’t have money for public transportation. People don’t see beyond their own eyeballs, when there’s so much to see. I mean, there’s this guy here who’d been stripped of every semblance of a dignified well-off life and he was still happy and had a purpose, and then there are the college brats who didn’t have any of the material covered all year on the morning of the midterm and passed out on the offer of sharing my notes for getting a smoke because although their parents probably spent their life savings to put them through college, they just didn’t give enough of a fuck. Who deserves the money? Those college brats or the hardworking deaf and dumb vagrant who probably got rejected out of every job he applied for by incompetent higher-ups that perceived any and all handicaps as a sign of retardation, all because they weren’t properly informed and/or trained and never really bothered to fill in the gaps of their own lack of education by taking the process of gathering common knowledge into their hands? It’s just not fair. Life is not fair, so many people deserve so many things that other people who don’t deserve shit have effortlessly, and hardly even use. Where’s the karma? Where’s the balance? Where’s the sense of shame that could fill in where karma and balance fell short?
Nobody has the answer to that but people can make a difference, because the money you spend on drinks and salad can very well sustain someone’s household for a week, if only you had the time to look the hell around.
People are so quick to judge, you know? That whole drill of actually taking the time to put yourself in another’s shoes is not rad these days. Everybody’s cozy in their own little heads and perfectly satisfied about figuring life out and shit, constantly giving people crap over not seeing it the same way they do. They always forget that there’s absolutely no way to be sure whether your way is the right way, or whether there is a right way at all. You just gotta hope it is and take comfort in the fact that it’s a snug fit, at least for you and at least for now.
For instance, there’s this really poor, deaf and dumb vagrant that lodges on the opposite side of the street I live in, and he makes a living selling random merchandise with a sign on top issued from the supposed deaf and dumb organization of the district. My college bus always drops me off where he spreads out the good old money-makers on a blanket, and I regularly gave him the rest of my weekly allowance no matter how much they amounted to because I figured he probably needs them more than I do, making sure to pick up a pack of gum to save him face and ditching before he figures out what’s happening and tries to communicate his gratitude and/or absolute scorn, I never hung around long enough to determine which he goes for. I was shortly caught in the act and called an absolute idiot to fall for a con artist and what not. I stopped giving him money, following the philanthropists’ initiative of calling myself an idiot until one day, I was waiting for the college bus to come and one of the guys at uni who was waiting with me placed the architectural model he made for his midterm project where the poor old guy sits, who went on a theatrical gesturing act worth of auditioning for Cats, moaning unintelligibly to try and tell the guy that he’s sitting in his spot. The guy took him for a maniac, held his model protectively like a newly-born baby, cradling it against his chest safe away from the mad guy who was met by laughter and aggressiveness from all the other two-bit brats that pass for undergraduates. I tried to make the guy understand that he was merely telling him that he was sitting in his work spot and gave him my seat, and the other chicks took the hint and shut the hell up, settling on rolling their eyes back in their hollow excuse of a skull. That’s when it hit me, the guy wasn’t a con-artist, he wasn’t lying because why would he lie when it was too early to sell anything, he hadn’t set out his merchandise and didn’t show any signs of being bothered or remotely alarmed by the deafening noise that drove everybody away from the curb shortly afterwards when one of the air-conditioner ventilation boxes on one of the shops broke down, he was just a guy that fate got on his knees because the country still hasn’t found away to employ the qualified, let alone the under-privileged. I had a lot of respect for him, watching him try to make a good life out of the little he was given, even trying to make it pretty by cleaning the tree pot in front of his spot of cigarette stubs and dusting a 5 metre-radius around the place he’s sitting with his own personal broom, even though he didn’t have to. He was human, and he was trying to make his surrounding as humanly habitable as possible, and that kind of impulse can only be produced by someone who had integrity. That poor old man had a life of his own making, he was proud of it and he wasn’t gonna let life get him without a fight. The next day, I gave him all my money like I used to, I didn’t call myself an idiot for it and I gladly walked home for two hours when I missed the bus later in the day because I didn’t have money for public transportation. People don’t see beyond their own eyeballs, when there’s so much to see. I mean, there’s this guy here who’d been stripped of every semblance of a dignified well-off life and he was still happy and had a purpose, and then there are the college brats who didn’t have any of the material covered all year on the morning of the midterm and passed out on the offer of sharing my notes for getting a smoke because although their parents probably spent their life savings to put them through college, they just didn’t give enough of a fuck. Who deserves the money? Those college brats or the hardworking deaf and dumb vagrant who probably got rejected out of every job he applied for by incompetent higher-ups that perceived any and all handicaps as a sign of retardation, all because they weren’t properly informed and/or trained and never really bothered to fill in the gaps of their own lack of education by taking the process of gathering common knowledge into their hands? It’s just not fair. Life is not fair, so many people deserve so many things that other people who don’t deserve shit have effortlessly, and hardly even use. Where’s the karma? Where’s the balance? Where’s the sense of shame that could fill in where karma and balance fell short?
Nobody has the answer to that but people can make a difference, because the money you spend on drinks and salad can very well sustain someone’s household for a week, if only you had the time to look the hell around.
2 comments:
This is just amazingly, and beautifully, put, to say the least. I actually said "WOW" the second I was done reading. You've conveyed a great message with such eloquence. I'm trying to look for the right words to say, but I seem to be falling short. It really does make you wonder, think, and puts things into perspective. I really just want to say Thank You for this post.
I appreciate this. I really do.
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