shitty

the world sure has a weird way of opening our eyes. i spent much of the past 2 weeks thinking about how shitty my life was when the world gives me a nice kick in the ass and whispers to my ear, "you want to know what shitty is boy? let me show show you what shitty is..."

the realization came to me on my jeepney ride to work this morning. the jeepney was almost full, so i took the first available seat i saw, which was beside a woman carrying a child. i wondered why the kid was unusually fidgety, until i turned my head and saw that he was victim of down syndrome (more commonly known as mongoloid). the sight first overcame me with surprise, and then pity.

as the jeepney sped on its route, i imagined how it would be in the shoes of either the kid or his mother.

imagine you being the kid himself. the forces of fate seems to be arrayed against you. you wonder why people keep looking at you in a weird way, a look of pity, or fear, or just a plain grossed out look on their faces. they look at you as if you were some alien, a creature of from another world.

imagine you being the mother of the kid. imagine carrying the child for 9 months and discovering your child's affliction just moments after a very painful and exhausting delivery. imagine knowing the hard road your child will soon have to tread. imagine sharing the sad load of your child's difficulties and sorrows.

while pity filled me, i also felt guilty about the sense of contentment i was bound to get from knowing their fate. how cruel fate seemed to them, as if they were given those sorrowful set of circumstances so they could be used to teach us ordinary people to be content, as if they were being used as examples for us common people, like criminals doomed to die by a cruel judge called fate.

but inspite of the sorrow, i also saw reasons for joy. the jeepney halted at a crossing, and the child stood still, looked up at his mother's eyes and smiled. the mother smiled back. remembering that sight simply made my day.

sometimes, it takes the shadows to make us see the sunshine.