When I was Eighteen

I was being raised in a humble way. I grew thinking about our constant poverty. But I did not feel in any time I remember about my life that we are poor. Our parents love us so much. That's why we did not feel any shame, any difficulty,
in comprehending what was life is supposed to mean.

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Life for us was simple. Just obey the will of our parents for they will think nothing but our good and welfare, and consequently our tailored suit future, study hard, excel hard so that we will reach our goals. Work hard and see the worthiness of the profession we will enter.

I was then eighteen, I did encountered my life which was not that simple. It was full of twist and turns. Wherever I go, poverty is popping out like bubbles, like mushrooms. The poor were everywhere. I began to symphatize with their cause. I began to have a feeling of solidarity for the poor. My simple dreams for just myself was shattered. I began to dream not just for myself, but for my fellowmen, which like me were then envious of the rich. I began to realize the proverbial gap between the rich and the poor was not just halucinations of the few, but was the reality of the many who were dying everyday not eating their breakfast, nor their lunch and dinner not just a couple of times but many, many times until one lost counts.

I began to talk with the untidy children in the streets, in the fields, in everywhere I cast my eyes to, I saw children suffering, together with their parents. I began to know the feeling of people without hope, without future, without everything. I began to feel like their parents losing life watching their children dying.

I felt guilt on my spirit, and lump on my throat, that it did really take long for me to realize that the definition of life was not that really simple.

I have had learned that some people did live to be left dying, some were dying so that other people may live, some may spit on the wounds and sufferings, and some people were just watching.

That could be the life humans want in this world.

IT WAS TWELVE YEARS AGO. I did saw the world in the eyes of the hopeless. I did feel the angst and sufferings of that hopelessness.

Maybe the world had changed since then...

March 2000