Why are humans so selfish? My mum told me that one of her staff passed away last week after one month of medical leave. He had pneumonia, and no one dared to visit him in the hospital. He died alone.
This reminds me of the SARS period a few years back. I read a story where public buses and cabs refused to drop and pick up hospital workers, and nurses in their uniforms taking the train were shunned by fellow passengers.
I am one of those lucky ones who escaped the epidemic, but throughout that period, I was full of awe and admiration for those hospital workers. They were at the fore front fighting the illness, treating the sick, and some even caught the virus and died.
If anything, they gained our respect, and not nasty put-downs like why were they taking public transport if they had a risk of infecting others? Ask ourselves what did we ever do for those who were sick?
These people did their jobs without complaints, with all the overtime and running around, fully aware they could get sick and die too. The least people could do was to be nice instead of treating them like some sort of walking virus carrier or something.
There were people dying everyday. How would you feel if you witness people dying and tried your best to help them, but to no avail? And when you go out, other people avoided you like the plague.
What if someone from your family dies? The person could be a son / daughter, a father / mother, an aunt / uncle. My cousin succumbed to leukaemia at the age of ten. I was also only ten then, and went to the hospital often, seeing her got poked everywhere with needles.
I could not bear it, I really felt for her. And when my mum gave me the news that she (my cousin) had passed on, I cried my heart out. I cried at her funeral, even though I tried to be strong for my younger cousins and comforted them.
Have you seen how death looks? I saw it, four times, first when my elder cousin died of an asthmatic attack, when my cousin succumbed to leukaemia, when my late grandfather was lying in his coffin, and most recently when my late music teacher was lying in her coffin.
If people have witnessed up close and personal how death looks like, they would think twice about treating those hospital workers as outcasts. These are the people whom we need to lend a helping hand even more.
A couple of incidents happened to me and people I know during the SARS period. It was such a scare that all schools were closed and lessons were suspended, so I was sort of on leave for a month or so. That was a welcome break, as I need not face those "brats" day in day out.
Before the news came that schools were closed, I had to settle the music score for the new school song. So a couple of colleagues and I drove down to the musician's place and we negotiated on the final details.
That day I was already feeling under the weather. The next day, I was down with flu and had to take medical leave. That evening, the news came that schools would be closed until further notice and students were advised to be quarantined at home due to the outspread of SARS.
I was sick with flu for about a week. Anyway my colleague called me and said that I should not have followed them if I was not feeling well. Now she would have to disinfect and clean her car thoroughly.
I was already feeling so sick, and hearing this made my blood boil, but I was too sick to say anything, so I just mumbled an apology. After two weeks, we needed to go back for a meeting. If the schools were not closed, I would have taken a week off as it was really bad flu.
That day when we went back for the meeting, I had fully recuperated, yet nobody dared to sit next to me! Call themselves teachers, and they are all so hypocritical and self-centred! Whether I was the one who was sick or someone else, that was no excuse for downright shunning someone, let alone a colleague and friend!
Sometimes I think it is only through crisis like this that you get to see people's true colours. Like in the past each time any of my guys were sick, I would definitely be over at their place and made sure I was there for them, yet whenever I was sick, they would always be far far away.
If a guy's girlfriend is sick and he does not even bother asking about her or showing some concern, how is she going to depend on him and will he really be with her in sickness and in death next time?
Worst is when the girl still went to meet him despite being sick (at the guy's insistence), but in the end got scolded by the guy for trying to spread her germs to him.
A crisis can bring out the best in people, as well as the worst. Just a pity often people chose to show their worst instead of their best.
This reminds me of the SARS period a few years back. I read a story where public buses and cabs refused to drop and pick up hospital workers, and nurses in their uniforms taking the train were shunned by fellow passengers.
I am one of those lucky ones who escaped the epidemic, but throughout that period, I was full of awe and admiration for those hospital workers. They were at the fore front fighting the illness, treating the sick, and some even caught the virus and died.
If anything, they gained our respect, and not nasty put-downs like why were they taking public transport if they had a risk of infecting others? Ask ourselves what did we ever do for those who were sick?
These people did their jobs without complaints, with all the overtime and running around, fully aware they could get sick and die too. The least people could do was to be nice instead of treating them like some sort of walking virus carrier or something.
There were people dying everyday. How would you feel if you witness people dying and tried your best to help them, but to no avail? And when you go out, other people avoided you like the plague.
What if someone from your family dies? The person could be a son / daughter, a father / mother, an aunt / uncle. My cousin succumbed to leukaemia at the age of ten. I was also only ten then, and went to the hospital often, seeing her got poked everywhere with needles.
I could not bear it, I really felt for her. And when my mum gave me the news that she (my cousin) had passed on, I cried my heart out. I cried at her funeral, even though I tried to be strong for my younger cousins and comforted them.
Have you seen how death looks? I saw it, four times, first when my elder cousin died of an asthmatic attack, when my cousin succumbed to leukaemia, when my late grandfather was lying in his coffin, and most recently when my late music teacher was lying in her coffin.
If people have witnessed up close and personal how death looks like, they would think twice about treating those hospital workers as outcasts. These are the people whom we need to lend a helping hand even more.
A couple of incidents happened to me and people I know during the SARS period. It was such a scare that all schools were closed and lessons were suspended, so I was sort of on leave for a month or so. That was a welcome break, as I need not face those "brats" day in day out.
Before the news came that schools were closed, I had to settle the music score for the new school song. So a couple of colleagues and I drove down to the musician's place and we negotiated on the final details.
That day I was already feeling under the weather. The next day, I was down with flu and had to take medical leave. That evening, the news came that schools would be closed until further notice and students were advised to be quarantined at home due to the outspread of SARS.
I was sick with flu for about a week. Anyway my colleague called me and said that I should not have followed them if I was not feeling well. Now she would have to disinfect and clean her car thoroughly.
I was already feeling so sick, and hearing this made my blood boil, but I was too sick to say anything, so I just mumbled an apology. After two weeks, we needed to go back for a meeting. If the schools were not closed, I would have taken a week off as it was really bad flu.
That day when we went back for the meeting, I had fully recuperated, yet nobody dared to sit next to me! Call themselves teachers, and they are all so hypocritical and self-centred! Whether I was the one who was sick or someone else, that was no excuse for downright shunning someone, let alone a colleague and friend!
Sometimes I think it is only through crisis like this that you get to see people's true colours. Like in the past each time any of my guys were sick, I would definitely be over at their place and made sure I was there for them, yet whenever I was sick, they would always be far far away.
If a guy's girlfriend is sick and he does not even bother asking about her or showing some concern, how is she going to depend on him and will he really be with her in sickness and in death next time?
Worst is when the girl still went to meet him despite being sick (at the guy's insistence), but in the end got scolded by the guy for trying to spread her germs to him.
A crisis can bring out the best in people, as well as the worst. Just a pity often people chose to show their worst instead of their best.
4 comments:
If you are interested in a secular and evolutionist view on selfishness, then you need to read Richard Dawkin's.
The general rule of thumb is that people will take as much as they can, which is why you need to establish clear limits and bounds.
Why people choose to act unjustly rather than justly is a perennial problem. You would expect people to behave rationally - since we are capable of being rational. Yet, that is often far from the reality.
Ah! One more recommendation on the nature of man - for various reasons, I like the movie Forbidden Planet (a 1950s sci-fi movie - unusual for the time, it was an A picture, rather than a B picture).
As doctor Morbius cries out near the movie's end: "My evil self is at that door and I am powerless to stop it!"
Sorry, irrelevant...but: You are tagged to write 6 weird stuff about yourself! ;)
Richard : THanks for the recommendation. Will check it out.
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