I’m scared to make contact with poor people
Life is a race, if you don’t run fast you’ll get trampled
- Viru Sahastrabudhhe
Homeless people are all over the city. They travel around and ask for money in every corner of it, coffee shops, bookstores, supermarkets, etc. They gathered and slept in front of stores and sometimes they got caught and have to move to another spot. Life is harsh, poor people have become a part of our life, however, their existence always make me feel uncomfortable.
Whenever I saw a homeless people, a part of myself screamed, the part where poverty doesn’t allow to exist, where everybody is equally treated. Sadly, that is not how the world works ! This cruel world created a system to keep everything in its place — The social rank. This stratification system seems to be working really well, they help company to pick its selling location, identify potential customers. But is it have to be that way?
In Asia, most families point their finger at those poor beggars sitting lonely at the store’s front door and told their innocent kids: “If you don’t study hard, you will end up just like that !” Yes, they’re right but that’s the exact thing that their parent told them and that makes those kids to hate poor people as those people have become a representation for their darkest future and seeing poor people help them to gain more will to study their ass off.
But that’s not the reason why I hated to make contact with homeless people. I hated to make contact with them because I hated myself, I hate the feeling when I helplessly look at them struggle with their lives. The moment when I give some money to the beggars, I smiled, I try to emit some joy and motivations through my facial expression, but inside, a fog of sorrow appeared. Clearly, that amount of money is definitely not enough ! But that’s my limit, I can’t do anything else for them, I can just only stand there look at them as they continue their way asking for money.
Can we just create a world where everyone is equally treated? Can we eradicate poverty? I don’t think so, maybe that other part of me will continue to exist and it will never be gone, but the point is, we humans are losing that other part of us, the part where love and sympathy still exists.
Eliminating poverty is a difficult task, restoring sympathy is even more harder. This cruel world didn’t take away our sympathy, it’s us who made this world so cruel and blame it for what we’ve done. Stop making excuses, show people some love.