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I'm walking through the big shopping mall today and seeing some people buying stuff I can't afford and I'm somewhat saddened by the fact that I have less then them.
In the same time, of course, I realize they too have less than somebody else, and that somebody else in their turn has less than the other guy...
I buy two pairs of shoes and walk out with big bags and walking down the street feeling good untill I see a person dressed poorly, carrying some old bags with a painful facial expression. Now I'm saddened because that person has much less than me.
...
Looking out the window I see a garbage pick-up truck stopping across the street and two men jumping from it and walkng toward the garbage containers. It is 2.30 in the morning, pouring rain, not a soul outside but these two guys.
Their work is, of course, very important, but boy does it suck!
And once again I think to myself: they are somebody's children. Somebody's gamble with life. Surely, they didn't intend to have a child who will grow up to become a sanitation worker? No, everybody thinks they're giving birth to a future talent. Not that being a sanitation worker is something unworthy or shameful but honestly, nobody dreams of becoming a garbage utilizer!
Sure, these people need to tell themselves something consoling. I hope they do. But I imagine the pressure they're under when the society sees such unskilled labor as a failiure. Although it's no more a failiure than your regular vain pop-singer if you ask me, it's less of a failiure because at least it's beneficial for the society.
...
I was out one of these nights. The weather was ok so we spent some time talking near this little night store. This stray dog came by. She laid down on the ground and I thought since I’m by the store I’m going to buy her smth to eat, like that hotdog I saw. So I went in and bought a sausage roll (it’s very much like hotdog). I cracked it open so that the sausage would stick out and threw it in front of the dog. She sniffed it and ... nothing. She didn’t consider it food. But as a sign of appreciation of my efforts perhaps, she came closer and sat near me. I pet her. The dog was very polite and as soon as my friend approached me and I took a step away she left.
I still remember that feeling when I was told so explicitly by my mother "you can't help them all". She had to say that because when I was a kid I would bring almost every cat and dog I saw on the street home to feed and keep in the house. I was thinking, it's bad to be hungry and to not have a warm home, so why should animals live outside and not have enough to eat? But then "you can't help them all" sank in. It made me sad. I felt helpless because I couldn't fix things, which needed to be fixed. Maybe that was one of the first times I've felt helpless, trapped. Fairy tales were proclaiming something so different: magic, wishes coming true, ways being found, wrongs being righted, good prevailing over bad. None of them was ending in 'you can't help them all'. But that's how real life apparently was. You have to get used to whitnessing suffering you won't be able to do anything about. Have to learn to be happy despite it. Have to 'fix' your empathy to the 'appropriate' level. Not because it's objectively better to have it lowered, but simply to survive.
So every time I feed a stray animal or donate some money to the animal shelter that phrase pops up again in my mind. Of course, it's good that I'll help some of them (for a period of time), but I can not help them all and that is sad. It's just wrong. Whenever I help some I know there are countless more that won't be helped. They will cry and nobody will hear them.
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Zenner
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05-04-2013
* goddess (sorry)
And now that I have to say something else, I'll say this: IF (and I'll repeat that), IF there's someone behind all this (which, for sound reasons, I'm convinced there is), how can IT be worse than some of their creations??? It doesn't make sense... YET, I hate it/them/whatever... DEEPLY... all the same (and they know it... and, I'd dare say, they EXPECTED it!). |
Zenner
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05-04-2013
(and sorry for the outlandish comment... hope it doesn't traumatize anybody)
watermelon, watermelon, watermelon |
Irina |
06-04-2013
Zenner, I wouldn't like to be a goddess. It's better not to be anyway. |
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05-04-2013
I often have the same thoughts.
Why are certain jobs valued more (monetary terms) than other? Why is there a status connected to certain jobs and others are looked down on. If the person does not sweep streets or collect garbage, will the rich person clean it themselves? I get saddened to see all the inequality around us with big sponsorship being paid to celebrities / sportsman for product endorsements, which is more money than most people earn in their whole life. When you buy the product, that hidden cost is added to the overpriced product. That is why I do not buy branded products. Rather donate to a person that really needs it. |
Irina |
06-04-2013
In USSR road swippers would get an appartment from the government after having worked for 10 years. Not a bad idea. Branded products? I rarely buy those too. Only if I really like something. But I don't feel compelled to pay for masses' blind worshipping of some over-advertised crap. I prefer handmade bags to designer ones. |
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05-04-2013
I coudn't relate more to what you said about animals. Of the all the suffering that goes on in the world, the one that affects me the most is animal suffering. Just thinking about all the cats and dogs ( no to mention other animals of course, but we tend to feel more for domesticated animals) that live in the streets, alone, with nothing to eat, without a warm place to sleep in, without any company, afraid, at the mercy of cold weather, rain, stupid people who kick them and so forth. ItВґs disgusting. And where I live, I see abandoned animals all the time. And animals who have owners but are treated poorly. It heartbreaking.
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Irina |
06-04-2013
Yeah... And as you get older you learn there's even more suffering going on in the animal world than you have previously imagined. I keep learning more and more horrific facts. |
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14-05-2013
My grandfather was a garbage man for a long while, which is how he provided for his family. He'll always come up to me and say, "How could someone as dumb as me have a grandchild like you?" I know he's trying to be kind to me, telling me he's proud of me, but at the same time, I don't know how to tell him that he's a wonderful man and that he's not a failure. There's no reason for him to feel that way.
And as for the stray dog and empathy, it reminds me of the prologue from Bertrand Russell's autobiography, "Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer." As your mother said, we can't help them all. There's very little we can do about most things. |
Irina |
15-05-2013
I often quote Bertrand Russell on my blog. Great mind. As your mother said, we can't help them all. There's very little we can do about most things. This is true, we can barely take care of ourselves much less of other beings. But that should just raise the question of why add to the problem, why creating more people who will have to whitness the suffering and feel powerless to stop it. |
Sure thing...
thanks for expressing it so well.
And I wonder... why oh why
couldn't you (or your next of kin)
have been GOD/GODESS???
I'll vote for you (or your next of kin)
in the next elections...