Yesterday late afternoon, I walked passed a fruit vendor that caught my attention. He look quite old enough to retire. He has his intent attention over convincing people who walked passed him to buy some of his fruits. He is situated beside a shopping mall in the very far end where many other vendors have there mini table set up, too. It’s very visible how he must be tired and that he needed rest. Well, to be completely honest, living in a country (Philippines) where majority of the population does not have a comfortable life, these scenes does not surprised me anymore. I have seen far worst cases than that, but there are just times like this that makes you want to stop from your track and say a mouthful of encouraging words just to cheer people like him, he looked like he needs it of all people. I’m not from a rich family, but we are still fortunate to say the least. And everytime I get to see old, aged people still working themselves out there pains me. I just couldn’t imagine how it must have been a real struggle to live almost all your life doing the same thing you were doing since and without seeing any progress at all.
And then I think about my father. My father belongs to the 60% (this percentage is only my own calculation and may vary and not accurate) of the population here in our town who have a blue collar job. He is one of those people thriving harder than any other workers. He gets paid for what service he provides and for what outcome he have accomplished. He have no fixed salary. Sometimes they get paid lesser than the actual price of their service, but there are times they get paid rationally. And if he gets lucky, there are some customers who even give him a decent pay with a tip. Sometimes I get to ponder, how it must’ve been so hard for him to endure that kind of work. How it must have been so stressful knowing he have his wife and 3 children dependent on him. How it must’ve been difficult to get along with people who he hates at work and how many arguments he has to slipped away just so he can still stay and earn money. His job is tough and i know how difficult and it’s alot of work for his petite body. It must be very tiring and exhausting to work every single day nonstop and still earn less. It made me realize about how we, millenials tend to over react about our shallow sufferings, whining about how we will be able to cope with our issues in life that’s not even half of what our earliest people had gone through in the past. We are even lucky to have education, get to decide what we wanted to do and has a chance to get a life we want. Unlike these people who were left with no choice but to live the circumstances that they’re in because of the lack of education and opportunities. Many, if not all, get to take everything of that for granted.
Therefore, the lesson to get here is that, we really have to think about seeing what’s still good in everything. Before you whine about how depressing your life is right now, care to look around you and sure enough, you’ll see all the reasons why you should still be grateful. Yes, we all have those rough times but pls do realize too that you don’t own every problem in the world. There are still people who has it worst and you don’t see any of them crying on the streets and complaining about it, instead they held their head high and thrive even harder just for their survival.
I hope that you all get to realized sooner than later that the life we live right now, no matter how simple it is, is something to be grateful for. Not all people get to live such comfortable life as you have.
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