Time
Time. There is never enough of it, no matter what we do, how hard we try to stop it, we always run out, hit the end of the tracks. We rush on, our lives entirely dictated by time. We are always looking forward, to what’s next, to what’s just beyond the horizon and we never stop. It goes on and on, a vicious circle of time and exams and money and love and problems and we don’t pause, don’t say wait a minute, don’t pause the clock and just sit and think. It doesn’t matter what we think about but just think, think about what we have, not what we want but what we have right there in that moment. It’s important because it is so easy to get caught up in our own little bubble with a few select people, friends, parents, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, but we need to step back. We need to pop the bubble and appreciate what we have.
Just think about it, while you are complaining about school and exams, there is a child somewhere, dreaming of an education, fighting for the right to learn. It doesn’t matter where they are because there will always be someone, somewhere who is deprived of that necessity and we forget. That is the true tragedy in this society; we forget. We hear about the horrors that happen in the news or see on social media, terror attacks, shootings, war, suffering and we all say ‘Oh how horrible. It must be awful’ but at the end of the day, we go home to a warm bed with a roof over our heads and a meal in a stomach and we forget about the suffering. We don’t appreciate the privileged lives we have because most of us have no idea what it’s like. I know I don’t. I have no idea what it is like to lose a mother, a father, a friend, to be deprived of freedom of speech, to be forced to work from the age of 9, to be a slave, to have no home to come back to but there are people that do experience those things every day. Whether it’s the raw loss of a loved one or the coldness of the pavement beneath a shivering, sleeping body, there are people suffering and there always will be, that is one thing I am not denying but the thing that truly hurts is that most people don’t care.
Most people skirt away from the homeless on the streets literally begging for money to pay for their next meal. But what they don’t realise is that if that was me, I would be mortified, to be reduced to that state and relying on the small generosity of strangers and to see the way people look at them… They have little in their lives but at least they have their dignity, however small it may be, and they are human beings just like every one of us is. But even their dignity is being stripped away piece by piece by the strangers walking past who are ignorant. They have no idea what has happened in that persons’ life for them to be without a home and yet they judge them anyway. No one, I repeat, NO ONE has the right to judge another human being without knowing their story, their history and yet we all do it. It needs to stop. We need to pop that bubble and it is so hard because we are naturally selfish but it needs to happen. No one wants to be described as selfish, no, but those three letters ‘ish’ can be replaced so easily by ‘less’ and that is a word you should proudly wear. To be selfless, I know I want to be and you should to. So let’s do it, there is nothing stopping us.
A small act of selflessness every day goes a long way. Some money to a homeless man, some flowers for an old lady all of this goes a long way and may change some lives or at least brighten up someone’s day. Happiness is something we chase with a burning desire and not many can say they are truly happy. It is an achievement that is so easy to gain by helping others. It sounds so cliché but there is a reason it is cliché; because it is true. Something that seems so small and insignificant to you can really change someone else. It is so simple so just do it.
Pop that bubble.
