Charles Kurniawan

It was pretty harsh day… the humid and the heat was very anoying… Stressed, serious, or almost-angry looking faces were all over the place… It seems that everybody has a face that ready to killed anyone that day!! I was there in shanghai subway train, packed with hundreds of people.. Tightly squeezed by people from all direction.. seriously all direction including from the bottom since there was someone bring his luggage and put it right beside my feets… A little more squeeze will make me out of breath and end up fainted… Thanks god it was closed to "people’s square"(one of the most destinated place in shanghai) … lots of people getting out.. but its outnumbered with people coming in!!!! crazy.. it just crazy day…

Anyway, during the journey :p, I was looking around try to pay attention to everyone.. everybody looked so scary that day.. maybe the heat and the squeezed make them so.. But there were this girl… around 20th.. whom pretty much lucky got a seat but gave her comfort to a middle age man who just enter the subway… I noticed that the man were not even gave her a smile.. and her destination station still long to go… (I know because mine is the farthest one :p) she took a disadvantage position just for someone that probably she will never met anymore… Shanghai is populated with around 14 millions people… Believe me, everyday you will look on faces that you would never met again in your life… But she was having a little smile and I can see a peacefull look on her face…

You know, I think to myself, I realize that most of the time people, including me, are too concentrated on something or issues that are more negative rather than positive things.. like we are more likely aware of hatred, selfishness of the people around us, abuses, gossips or etc… (Hey! There is no happily ever after topic on newspaper!! Everyone want HOT stuff!! More deadly or scary it is, more interesting it would be)… Sometimes, whether you realized or not, we felt living alone with the enemies among us… well you might have some friends who cares about you.. but you still felt surrounded by millions of Strangers that makes you on guard all the time..

But, is it true?? or it just the way we think is wrong, that make all the things we perceived are seems so bad..

Are love and compassion really hard to find in our world?? Actually, its not hard at all… If we start to pay attention to other people, see their good side rather than bad side, think positive… learn to give out love and also learn to let it in.. I think it will open our eyes to see more love than the otherwise..

Also I met this germany girl, she lived at phillipines before  to help farmers to get their rights against the government.. while she could have continues her college degree.. But she stop, and she went to make an errand for those phillipino that she never met before.. and risk her life to be jailed or even killed… She faced water canon there… unbelieveable… I asked her why? She just smile to me and simply said.. I only live my life once, If I passed my chance to help other people to make better world, my live would be a waste… what a waste, he repeat her last sentence like a whisper…

Nowadays, everytimes I take a walk, I try to smile to other people and greed them… They return my smile with smile and then I realized more smile than stressed faces… I saw parents playing around with their children in the park, happy tears and hug in airports between friends or family, friends joking around at my school, etc… It is a wonderful world when you can see it..

You know we live inside a house with an ugly dirty window but have a beautiful view outside the house… It is just our choice to look and concentrate on our ugly window or look at beautiful view through it…

I have a friend who told me before about a phrase… but I have never understand it better than now…

Preoccupied with single leaf, you cannot see the tree…
Preoccupied with single tree, you forgot the whole forrest…

I know that Selfishness, greed, gossips, and all negative sometimes is enjoyable to experience or to know… but if we preoccupied with those negative things… you cannot see the love and the compassion around us… And then it will lead you to forgot the whole meaning of life.

Just like those people who sang "Where is the love?"
I guess they are too blind to see The LOVE, which is actually everywhere…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 9:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.