Words and I

I know, taking care over 220.000.000 people is not easy. Especially when each person needs different things and is not easily satisfied. (Our old defense is, "Oh, can’t you see? It’s because we are human beings… we always need more and can never be satisfied! It is all soooo human, you know!")

But isn’t that why for the past 61 years, this nation has been creating a bunch of laws and institutions to take care of its people, so it’s said?

Mmm… is it so?  

One afternoon. I was in the classroom with a few classmates during the lesson break. I still remember it clearly. One of my classmates, Esther was her name, came up to the blackboard and with a chalk, drew a big picture of a dollar sign followed by so many numbers, then she exclaimed," My parents have a lot of money. We are very rich!" Then all of us wowed at her as if we really understood the value of the money she wrote on the blackboard. We were just a bunch of eight-year-old kids, mind you!

As a kid, I was growing up thinking that rich people were those with lots of money, beautiful houses, cars, and… er, some servants (My mother has never had a servant in spite of the chores which seemed so endless when my siblings and I was very young). I guess most kids everywhere think the same and somehow they want to be rich, too when they grow up or wish that they have rich parents.

The idea of being rich is so powerful that it shapes the mind frame of our society. Most often, someone’s success is judged by his big houses, his bank accounts, his luxurious cars, his rank and power at work and society. We are attacked by consumerism, the more we have, the better we are.

Will I ever be able to tell my future children someday that being rich is nothing to do with having a lot? That it means to feel blessed to be able to help others when we do not have any?