The Internet does not fail to surprise me every time I go online. One minute I could be searching for Katy Perry’s latest music video, and the next second I could be watching a random video from China. That is exactly what happened to me when I came across the famous video of a two-year old girl getting run over by two vans in China. At first, the video seemed like a hit and run accident caught on camera, but I, along with the rest of the world, was more shocked to discover that 18 passers-by ignored the injured girl. Automatically, I suspected that the video was scripted – a scene from an amateur action movie, perhaps. Who would leave a two-year old child to die on the streets? Apparently, there are some people who would do that because the hit and run accident really happened, worse, the 18 passers-by still live on, with their consciences still intact.
One of the biggest mistakes society has today is its failure to look at the bigger picture – to consider other’s needs, feelings and opinions in everyday decision-making. The 18 passers-by probably did not want to be late for work, to miss a train ride home, or to waste valuable time bringing an injured girl to the nearest hospital when there are matters to attend to at work. The passers-by had their priorities in mind, but only theirs.
At times, animals seem to be more emphatic of their fellow creatures compared to how people treat each other. Dogs will never leave their young no matter what; they will do their best to protect them. They care for their young as soon as they are born, and stay with them whenever they can. Meanwhile, as of 2005, 37% of children in America grew up in broken families, thousands of unborn babies are arborted due to unwanted pregnancies, and there are millions of orphans and displaced in the world. The most heart-breaking thought is that sometimes, animals seem more worthy of love than humans.
Some people feed dogs with the most nutritiuos dog food in the market, and take in strays and care for their puppies as if they were their own children. Many vegans refuse to eat meat because cows and pigs get brutally slaugthered, and activists from PETA would rather go naked than wear anything made out of animal skin. Meanwhile, we do not mind living in a world where more than 800 million people have no potable water to drink, where thousands beg for alms just to eat at least once a day, where both men and women lose their lives in wars, and where children get run over repeatedly by cars in China. Oh, the irony.
How many mistakes do we have to commit before we realize that we are doing something wrong? If one person had the capability to finally help the dying little girl off the street, how come the 18 passers-by did not? I am the type of person who always has my family in mind, and when I saw the little girl being run over by the large vehicles, I imagined the possibility of how someone like her could easily be my little sister or perhaps my future child. I thought of how I would want someone to take five minutes of their precious time just to call an ambulance, since that is what I would have done.
The truth is, the little girl is not my little sister, nor is she my future child, but she is someone else’s daughter and a baby sister to her older brother. It seems as if we have grown desensitized to human suffering.
There is saying that goes “Everything you need to learn, you learn in Kindergarten.” Because in Kindergarten, you learn to say “please” and “thank you”, you learn how to sit properly, say “sir” or “ma’am”, and treat everyone with respect. As we grow up, we learn more life lessons that we should never forget, but we do forget, because we are human, and because we fail to remember such lessons we hink less of other people’s needs.
In order to have a better world, we simply have to remember. We need to remember that we have our own families, and that the boy who sits next to you in class is someone’s son, while the girl standing in front of you could be someone’s sister. We need to remember that life lessons are essential, because life is essential. We need to remember that no matter what, we are all just a small part of a bigger picture.