Mother Teresa

What does it take for one to be someone as wonderful as Mother Teresa? She was probably just as human as you and I, but the love that she had in her inspires. When God took her away, we lost an important voice preaching of empathy ...

What we have today in the world, are endless technological advances to help improve our life, designs to help us communicate with more strangers in the world, images to enjoy and appreciate, immediate news to educate, but yet we are losing our basic values of empathy.

As I lay engrossed in my new wonderful book "My Life So Far" by the incredible Jane Fonda, I am reminded of the wars that Ms Fonda has been through, fighting for the end of the Vietnam war, and being misunderstood for being unpatriotic because she wanted to end the war. I have been through some wars, not actively fighting in it, but against the latest, through the peace marches that were held in Sydney before the Iraq War started. Many have compared it to Vietnam, which I can only recollect through images on film, but in any war, there are only losers, no winners. There are people who lose their lives, their families, their loves ...



One quote in the book stands out:

"The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small" - Mother Teresa

Jane Fonda adds:

"There must be a stepping back, a looking at the big picture. Stepping back is hard when your life has been traumatised and hatred has built up against the "enemy" and against those who opposed the war and seemed to have sided with the enemy. This is why wars begun unnecessarily and for the wrong reasons - like the one we are fighting in Iraq as I write this - develop a momentum of revenge and justification. We have to keep going. Our men and women can't have died in vain. The people on the other side are truly evil. If we pull out now, we'll lose our credibility. Better to continue to send Americans to fight and perhaps die than to say we made a mistake."

I stand guilty on Mother Teresa's quote that we draw the lines of family too small, but I know I am not alone. I may not love the next stranger as much as I love my friends and my family, but I believe I practise empathy for all people. Most humans have empathy for the less fortunate, but sometimes, we can only seem to stomach them in small batches. The tragedy of 9/11, Bali, Tsunami, New Orleans and now the earthquakes in India and Pakistan all brought forth the best in mankind. The uniform tears for the tragedies and the numerous fundraising events, but these are "small" incidents as opposed to everyday poverty and AIDS in the world. There was the infamous ad about the number of people dying of these "causes" that had to be pulled out because it was too confronting to the governments and the superpowers of the world to react to them. When will people start realising that AIDS is no longer a gay man's disease but an epidemic in impoverished countries like Africa and is rapidly spreading to developing countries all around the world who are too poor to afford the advanced medical supplies to help sustain life.

An article linking AIDS and poverty: http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/whatwewant/povertyaids.shtml

I am not asking you to cradle an AIDS infected baby like Princess Diana did, but the world can do with a lot of less prejudice and more love, empathy and awareness. We look at the number of people who died and we sigh. I think we sometimes fail to think that like you and I, they have feelings and they have loved ones and they have families who are going to mourn their loss as much as we would. Not only for the dead but also for those suffering from poverty and the innocent Iraqis suffering the effects of war. Maybe even the soldiers who are fighting in Iraq that may not like what they are doing, but are helpless. We don't get to see many images because we are shielded from the effects of the war, but we can imagine what it would feel like if it happened to us, and hence empathy settles ...

If we are too withdrawn from these issues because we live in developed countries, we can look into our daily lives to see how we exclude people. Just my everyday trip to and from work can easily show how selfish people are sometimes. On overcrowded trains or buses, people like to stand near the exits even when they are not due to alight till much later. I feel like screaming at them to get moving or people who hog onto two seats with their "fat asses" to spare a thought, but I don't want to be one of those angry people, so I know though I am empathising, I am not doing my part. I want to tell them that we are just all as eager as they are to get home and we all have families or someone to get home to, as much as they do.

We have to look within us to find the Mother Teresa within. I do volunteer work because I love to help the less fortunate (than I am) to have a better life, but sometimes, I wonder if people will not donate or attend a fundraiser only if there is a major drawcard like a celebrity attached to it, to glamorise the whole cause. This defeats the whole purpose to charitable work (not the celebrities fault but sometimes ours) where the point of it is to educate, increase awareness and assist. The glamour of the position does not attract me but the smiles from those affected does. It is this power of influence that I am interested in, not in the power of control.

Like many, I feel small and insignificant sometimes, but I will never cease to speak up for my rights. In a land that I now choose to call my home, there are still many issues that we can sometimes feel helpless about, but speaking about it in public forums like this and having discussions, will hopefully increase awareness, and the importance of empathy. We need to be aware in order to be able to form an opinion. Like many of you, I used to hide behind and listen when people talk about politics or I choose to walk away because politics is too difficult, or it is not for me. Little was I aware of how infectious it is, and how my daily life options can be limited by this lack of knowledge and opinion. I was dumb then but I want to educate now. It is important for us to read and listen, and for us to discuss as objectively as possible (with facts), so that we can recognise injustice and speak against it when it occurs. In the process, we become stronger and better human beings, and hopefully create awareness amongst the ignorant.

I believe the ongoing natural disasters are a sign that we (or the superpowers) have become heartless and we need a leader who can truly inspire us to set thins right, but in the absence of that, we have to fight within our environments by doing the right things.

This is a long and endless journey but we are not alone, and we will never be, because we can all be like Mother Teresas, if only we think and practise the love within us to include and to be proud of who we are.