I cried today at the mall.

It wasn’t this overwhelming gushing thing I used to do, but it was a quiet affair where I was terribly ashamed and worried if people would find me that way. You see, I wasn’t depressed, or upset. I was going through a character loss from a book. However, this character was very real – It was the Reb (Rabbi Albert Lewis) whom I have just “met” via Have a little faith by Mitch Albom.

Mr Albom’s book wrote about his Rabbi, who was dying from cancer but lived every moment so… joyously and kindly, always caring about others and very little about himself. When asked if there was anything he was worried about his death, it was his “second” death that he was worried about – the one where people, that you once loved or was connected to in one way or another, fades away from memory.

This book serves to keep him alive in people’s memories, in a way bigger than the Rabbi probably ever imagined.

And it all started because the Reb asked Mr Albom if he could speak his eulogy for him when the time comes. Thusly, in the last 2-3 chapters of this extended eulogy, I cried quite extensively in the mall, hunched over my Kindle.

 

Thanks to the Reb and Mr Albom, it has both reminded me of the questions and intentions of my life. I will start by pointing out a very incongruous and curious situation:

 

All over the world, we have got conservations set up to preserve large pieces of lands, animals; we have got programs set up against animal abuse, global warming and what have you. I vaguely remember people even pointing out to me how people suck – because we, the people, hurt animals when we are animals ourselves. Closer to home, I have had various run-ins because I have 2 tails hanging off a fully leather bag.

I love animals. I used to volunteer in RSPCA when I was young, advocate for many things regarding conservation of animals and so on. I think, WWF was like my dream job because I thought all I ever have to do was to sit and give all my love to animals.

One day, my vegetarian friend asked me, if I love animals so much, why am I still an omnivore? My response to that, much to her disappointment and disapproval, was, “they were killed, they died, because people believed that we need them for our health. In respect to their lives, I won’t stop eating meat – but I will definitely ensure no meat is wasted when it’s on my plate.” Completely inconsistent to her, perhaps, it made sense to me. She wanted me to stop eating meat so that, if one by one, the world turned vegetarian, no one would kill animals senselessly anymore.

We each have our own opinions, and really, no one is right or wrong.

Then, all over the world, we have people being starved, abused, gunned, tortured, killed, murdered and more. Some in the name of religion, some in the name of power, others from the sheer inability to help themselves and furthermore from pure silliness.

People suck – even more so against each other.

Some statistics was rattled off to me one day. 10% of the world are millionaires, multi millionaires. They also hold 70% of the world’s money or something to those numbers. Yet, we have people starving to death, homeless people, people burglarising for money, necessities – basics. When the economy collapsed in America, the people who can’t afford their mortgages moved out, and the homeless moved in in their bid to procure a home via an obscure law.

In my dingy university hall, I watched countless videos as part of my course about how the Nazis tortured and killed Jews, the Darfur atrocities, the various tortures and atrocities America committed while under the banner of retaliation, the slides of people treating others like dogs in the name of Allah, God, Yahweh, and whatever else you can possibly find fo religion. Incredibly, the same people who professed to stand for the people, to fight for the people (think communism), are also the same ones who ended up being so disconnected from the people (North Korea, I am looking at you) that they do not realised they have failed their people.

In other words, while people worried about preserving the world’s flora and fauna, we have also forgotten our needy, have turned abusive towards our own and/or have completely desensitise ourselves to other human beings.

 

Oh, there are other organisations out there for humans by humans. Cancer Council, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mediciens sans Frontieres…. However, unless there is a doll-eyed child staring at people from the poster, you find less people fawning over those organisations as compared to the flora and fauna types. Unless people find themselves relevant to a cause, there are few who seemed to genuinely care.

The Reb is right: People don’t want to stop wars or the pain, even if they seemed completely dedicated to the problems that is not between humans.

 

The question here is, really, why. We can’t even treat each other right, we can’t even help each other right. We walk past that homeless drug addict round that corner and despise him, make judgements and walk away. Some of us have it luckier than others, we aren’t put into situations where we get tempted in those ways.

So… if we can’t even be good to each other, how can we be good to the other things around us?

 

Somewhere, there’s a panda laughing at us.