Sad Story ---- from Diary

Here is one story from my diary. This incident gave me quite a shock at that time, and I thought I would remember it for quite a long time. It turned out it didn't last that long. Good that I put that into ink, so now I could be shocked again, for good.

The story was about a mid-aged guy, and the time was quite late after dark. There was no record of what I was doing that late outside that day; given around that period I usually didn't do much meaningful stuff after work, it was quite possible that I just finished a nice dinner with friends in a restaurant, or came out of a kara okay bar, or something of the same sort. As I wasn't spoiled enough to take a taxi home yet, I had the chance to experience this at the bus stop.

It actually wasn't a hectic story; everything happened pretty much quitely. This guy, a little bit dilapidated, mid-aged, was selling newspaper. It was a cold night, so there weren't many people around; for those around, they all hustled towards a warmer place, like home. Suddenly that guy started sobbing, for one obvious reason ---- there was still a pretty big pile of newspapers in front of him. That didn't last long, before he wiped off the tears and started yelling for sales again.

Although I babbled quite a lot about what I thought and what I felt and what I guessed in my diary, I'm not going to put it here. After so many years, those are all irrelevant. All I know is I still feel a heart wrenching guilt for not having helped him while I definitely could. Althought most likely that guy overcame the hardship he experienced that night (or I would rather believe so), and probably has already forgotten what happened what happened, it still cannot acquit me.

While less than 10% of the world's population is enjoying a pretty excessive life, more than 50% are experiencing the other extreme. I don't know how to help because I feel like a coward. My wife and I once talked about experiencing some places where people are extremely deprived of the basic necessities of life, and then we flinched at the thought that we would end up giving up all what we have to help; there simply is no way to be rational under such circumstances. Maybe that's why we all bear sins, whoever has the luxury to go to a church or read the bible all bear sins for not being able to help enough.

After I wrote up the above piece simply based on my impression, I checked for some facts, and it is astonishing; over 2.8 billion people are living on under $2 a day; it's pretty sure most of them are living on even much less than that, if the distribution is really like a triangle.