Life

Inspired by the 4th August entry, "Signs", on Mr Johari's blog. Reading this entry brought to mind a recent English lesson, when we were shown a video clip on the horrors of Child Prostitution (not unlike the horrors of "a chemical weapons attack"), then posed a very big question by our English teacher: Do you know your cause in life? Quite a number of classmates didn't.

Many people tend to live for the now; today - seize the moment! This is not, by any stretch of imagination, a bad thing - after all, I too stand by the belief that we must live each day and each moment to its fullest, not to let a second tick by without doing something meaningful. In reference to a recent conversation question at the Oral English Prelim exam, "What, to you, is a waste of time?", and my answer was, "A waste of time, to me, is when one does something without a purpose or meaning behind it." Of course I'm sure many others produced much better answers, but that was mine, and it's something I sincerely believe in.

But not wasting time doesn't only apply to living each moment for what it is. Rather, it should apply to our lives as a whole - our whole life. In life, we should have a cause; something we feel passionately for, something we trust and believe wholeheartedly in dedicating our lives too. It doesn't mean we've to charge out to a battlefield and fight wars in the name of peace for the next sixty to seventy years (for some, less even), but just doing that little bit that could help, whatever it may be, will already make our lives much more meaningful than they ever would have been, had we just sat around and waited for someone else to do it.

Last week, an ex-SCGS girl came back to school to give the secondary fours a talk on career planning, working hard, etc. It was a good talk, which taught us the importance of working hard and playing hard and striving for excellence and success. But while this talk inspired many to work hard and take the corporate world by storm, I, on the other hand, was inspired to be the opposite of this fiesty ex-girl - I don't want my life to just be about studying hard in school, then clinching a respected job, and then working even harder there, to slowly (or quickly - depending) climb that corporate ladder. I mean, is that all there is to life? While poor people are suffering, not just in third world countries, but right here on our very shores, wars are taking place, people are dying, terrorists are attacking, are we just going to sit in a manager's office and carry out financial transactions (or whatever else our future job may require)? No, it's not wrong to strive to be successful in life, but how successful do we want to be, and what kind of success do we wish to possess? Satisfaction from a high-flying career? Or from something more fulfilling and enriching than just that?

Back to English. The video on child prostitution was really one of the most horrifying and terrifying clips I have ever been exposed to. Watching how young children, boys and girls alike, were sold, taken, captured to be sex slaves - the younger the better - was simply heart wrenching. Stories of children who had been captured, tortured and forced to perform all kinds of sex with the worst customers, who when later had the chance to be rescued, actually had mixed feelings about it, screaming and crying away - they wanted out, but yet they were too ashamed to ever face their families again, that some just refused to go.

And there I was, sitting comfortably in my classroom, knowing that at the end of the school day, I'd be able to return to the safety of home, to the warmth of my family, knowing that I wouldn't one day find my younger brother or sister missing, because he or she had been sold into the sex trade. It was a painful realisation for me.

What Miss Sie said about feeling for animals, because unlike humans, they cannot cry out for help - I feel the same for children. It is true that children are people with voices, but what difference does it make when their voices can't be heard?

I'm not the most noble person, definitely, and in the future, I may not dedicate my whole life to a worthy cause, but I am going to do whatever I can to help.

Being a Christian (please don't take offence to this if you aren't), my cause in life is actually to spread the word of God far and wide, to people who may never have had the chance to hear about Him. I'm not the best Christian, and I never will be, but I do believe, and to me, that's sufficient. I want to go to countries like Cambodia to do Missions, to not only tell the people there, especially the young children, more about God, but to help them in their poverty stricken situations. I remember once, back in primary school, after reading an article about people in the poorer regions of this world, I developed a personal motto of "Poor Children In Africa" (PCIA for short), and used it whenever a member of my family didn't finish his or her food during meals. It was quite a long time ago, and really did seem funny at the time - I used it after EVERY meal - but thinking about it, I guess it's true. PCIA really do exist. And I really wish I could do something to remove that 'P'.

Still, I feel that by getting the chance to know God and trust in Him, the holes in the hearts of many of these people will be filled, and perhaps poverty and famine and drought and whatever else, will no longer be of such importance to them, because the Fruit of the Spirit will make them full, and the grace of God will erase all worry, fear and sadness in their hearts.

I'm not a preachy person, or anything else one may be thinking after all that I've said. I'm just someone who believes in something; someone who's beginning to find her cause and direction in life.

P.S: I'm sure I'm not the only one who believes that teaching is a really noble profession. After all, if not for a video clip from an English teacher, and a blog entry by a Biology teacher, I (and many others too) would never have been inspired to think so much and to set myself in the right direction. So thanks to all the wonderful teachers, who in one way or another, have had a big impact on me, and have impressed upon me many things that I would not have learnt or realised otherwise.