musings of a boy

Maturity in Youth

Sorry guys it's been awhile since I've updated my blog. Well firstly I haven't been particularly inspired to write about anything lately and I spent the good part of a week recovering from my birthday hangover. Thanks to all you guys who made the effort to come down and thanks for the lovely presents. A special thanks to sim, dan and jeremy for looking after drunk me, to lumpy for doing all the running around, to van for supporting me on the dance floor and well to everyone else who helped look after me, love you'll loads.

I wonder how mature or at least socially developed we are to deal with the problems of the less fortunate in our midst. Singapore is always one of the first nation's to provide international aid when disaster strikes elsewhere yet we do not have a comprehensive system to deal with the mentally and physically challenged in our own country.

It is so often you find the handicapped, standing at street corners, selling tissue papers and what not. It's a very sad sight, these people with their handicap's literally begging to make ends meet. This should never be the case. Our society with all its wealth and financial resources should provide a means of social support for these people. If they have no family to support them and have no money of their own the government should absorb them into their various ministries and provide them with meaningful jobs to make a decent days wages. If this is not feasible, private companies should be given incentives by the government to employ the handicapped. Some private organizations are practicing this now, but its prevalence I feel is way too low.

Another disturbing sight these days is to see people with mental handicaps plying the streets lost. So often we see the old aunt walking under the block spouting nonsense at anyone who passes, or the young lady carrying a baby doll in her arms as though it were her child. We rarely give them a second look and just label them as 'siao' and carry on with our day. Sometimes we even shun them and worse still point and mock them. This is the behavior of animals and not a cultured and gracious society, which we claim to be. These people have real mental problems and need treatment, why a country as rich and as small as ours does not have an effective system to identify them and provide the necessary treatment I don't understand.

It is weird to hear the government emphasis so much on how our society should become more cultured, appreciating the arts and the finer things in life, and yet we cant treat the less fortunate in our midst with respect and dignity. Yes it isn't easy to deal with these people it takes a lot of time and patience to talk to them but that isn't an excuses for being rude and disrespectful. Are we all so obessed with rushing and making money that we've lost all sense of humanity and compassion? I know I am generalizing a lot in this article as there are many people out there, some very successful, who are willing to sacrifice their time to help the less fortunate. Those who know me well enough will understand why I write this with so much passion, at the end I hope not to see Singapore become a global economic powerhouse but a souless and loveless nation.

It has taken me awhile to publish this article and I'm glad I waited. I was totally dumbfounded when I found out what you do. You will never realize how much my opinion of you has changed. What you do really takes a lot out of a person and you are truly beautiful to do it. :)

posted by vignesh @ 12:59 PM