The best thing about working in a school even if not on a full-time level, is being able to see the way some kids go about their lives. Seeing how they actually think their lives suck is really gratifying. So much that one might actually feel like going up to one of the complainers and dumoing them in a place like Iraq or Sudan. Let them really see what suffering is like.
So it's true that suffering knows no boundaries. That's what psychological suffering is all about. We've all been through that. But take a closer look. We are in a rut because why? We want to be there. We like to suffer. We want people to know we are suffering. It actually makes us feel good... in a perverted kind of way.
Students in the schools in Singapore really have it good. Those who blame everyone else for their "sufferings' are on a self-induced guilt trip. So what if your parents are always working and ignoring you? Yeah, these parents are part of the issue. But students in secondary schools and above keep saying they're old enough, so leave them alone. Old enough for what, I ask? Physically yes, but they should also sit down and start to analyse their own lives in a clear way. Starting with blame is a perversion that negative friends have imbued them with.
Go to any cafe or teenage hangout. More often than not, listening to the teens talk makes one think that all adults are out to make their lives hell. That policemen are there to tyrannise them. Get a young policeman to sit down and you'll realise the guy was like them not too long ago. Thing is, he made a choice. Life is about making a living and taking responsibility for your own actions. Parents aren't always trained counsellors who will take time to sit down and talk. They sometimes get too busy to do what's right. But blaming them isn't an option that will resolve anything. These young ones have their own lives to live and anyone who tries to impose rules are like cage makers. Thin iron bars to restrict their lives and actions. Like being in jail.
They should try being locked up in a real jail. There was a show once. Tales from the Crypt. A middle-age white man was complaining about how life was unfair. He blamed everyone from the Jews to the Vietnamese to the Blacks for his troubles.
The moment he stepped out of the bar, he was thrown in a mish-mash of situations where he was a Jew one moment and a Vietnamese the next. And he was always being hunted down, whether by GIs or by the KKK. Ending? He was stuck in a train with other Jews sent to a concentration camp while he saw his friends coming out of the bar in his actual reality.
While people seldom have a choice in life, they learn to go with the flow. Make the best out of what they have. And at times, what they learn prepares them for what life has to throw at them in the future. Even in sunny Singapore, this holds true. If comparison is made, compare down with the less fortunate ones. And life does look a whole lot better.
Want to be bitter? Eat bittergourd.
