…in the outer…

I received an email from a friend today. She is slowly losing her father to cancer and she is feeling exhausted from the pain and anguish of the suffering and impending loss. Her email reminded me of my own experiences with the loss of my own mom. My mom’s death devastated me, and left a mark in my psyche for a long time. In fact, as I re-read my earlier post, “Why did God let Mom die?” I bawled my eyes out again. I was surprised that the emotional onslaught was just as unrelenting and the pain of the memories was just as acute. I thought I had been healed from the trauma of the experience, but I guess one never really gets healed from such painful loss.

As my friend, a social scientist herself, walks through this dark and lonely valley of loss and losing, she finds herself questioning not just the incomprehensibility of the entire experience, but also the very fabric of the world we live in. She writes:

Going through such painful experiences made me question even more about the world we are living in. With all the social problems around us getting worse by the day, someone wrote to our local newspapers and said that social scientists, especially sociologists, have to do more work to make the world a better place. We, social scientists, have already voiced out what is wrong with the world, but is society willing to take up the challenge and follow our suggestions. For a start, materialism, selfishness and self-centeredness are the major factors contributing to most crimes and deviant behaviour. Are corrupted politicians willing to turn a new leaf? Are some professionals and businesses willing to charge with their conscience instead of thinking of making large profits all the time?

Such questions, and the more far-reaching ones, such as, “Is there hope in this world?” “Why does life comes with so much pain and suffering?” “What is the purpose of life?” comes to us when we experience a renewed intimacy with pain, suffering and even death. In fact, my friend goes on to say, “My prediction is that the world will get worse until we hit rock bottom. I always wonder if we are already in hell itself!!!!”

I can understand such sentiments. Often, I would read articles in the newspaper and cry for those I read about. Like the story about the widow of the military officer killed even before he had the chance to hold his firstborn child. Or that story of Marina Brandt, the mentally ill patient who should have been in a hospital receiving treatment, but found dead in Skid Row because our system apparently does not seem able or willing to cope with mentally ill patients who need medical care.

In the midst of all the doom, gloom discouraging and disconcerting news that we see and read of all around us, I also received a newletter from a family friend. This friend is an inspiration to me. Although he was almost half a world away, living in the comforts of a beautiful city, surrounded with nice things, family and friends, and even though he had enough things to do in his life and business to keep him busy, he made a commitment to help those who were devastated by last year’s Tsunamis. He used his business to generate and raise donations and volunteers to go out to remotest areas of India, areas that were missed by the general mass media and even by the government. These areas were so remote that they were written off by government bureaucrat as unreachable. They even posted warnings to outside people who tried to go in to help. But the areas were not spared by the Tsunamis. People there were struck. They were left homeless; they lost family and livelihoods. They were doomed. But my friend and his volunteers got to them. They helped. And, they continue to help even today. They not only helped those who were devastated by one single event, they have continued to help with other problems that they found there. And, they also continued to go beyond that to resource these under-resourced and marginalized peoples. They are now creating solutions to help them help themselves. My friend said he is doing all this because he lives by the principle of finding worthy causes that are larger than oneself in order “to be personally and emotionally committed to for life.” You can read his story here.

He may be one person who is in his one small way, living to change the world. He may not be able to do it all at once, and he may not be able to change the whole world, but as the story goes of a boy who came upon a beach and found many fishes that was beached and the waves has rescinded, leaving the fishes to die. The boy picked up one fish at a time and threw them back to the sea in order to have a chance to swim again.

But there were so many fish lying there. A man walked passed and asked the boy, “What are you doing?”

“Saving the fish of course”

“It won’t make a difference. The weather is rough. The fish are weak from having been beached for so long. The waves will soon bring them back and beach them again. Besides, there are too many of them!”

“But it sure will make a difference for this one.” Says the boy, as he toss the fish back into the sea.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Inspiration, Life Journey. Subscribe to RSS: RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Email This Article Or Print This Article