Roses Among Fields of Thorns

Time for me to once again purge my mind of the week’s observations. Today’s dissemination bears linkage to the last piece on moral decay, but is also very much an intriguing topic unto itself. Oftentimes, through relentless generalisation and pigeonholing, my writings will make patent conjectures that reflect my thoughts at the time and are designed to place emphasis.

Throughout the last several days, I have witnessed and experienced a series of occurrences that have caused me to rethink my proposition that society is morally depraved in the absolute sense and devoid of compassion. One has had faith in humanity restored something minute yet momentous, and in consequence, I bring you:

Roses Among Fields of Thorns - Can You See Them? (Prejudiced Perceptions Paradigm)

From the standpoint of a realist, human society appears as a metaphorically saddening field of thorns, bleak and sinister, stretching for as far as the eye can see. But we all have to walk through it to reach our destination. Those whom are immature, ignorant, insensitive, morally corrupt or carefree have an edge over the rest of us, for their feet are thick-skinned, they are able to strut through the field blithely and do not feel the pain. For the rest of us however, as we walk through the field without protection, getting cut is inevitable.

When someone cuts us off in traffic, when something goes wrong in a project, when someone says something offensive, when things just don’t seem to be going our way and the world against us – life is full of these thorns, and when we encounter them, we experience anger, depression, stress and anxiety. It seems every time we tear our garment or scratch ourselves upon a thorn, we are quick to curse or despair. This reaction has evolved to the point where we have learned extreme sensitivity to these thorns, actively looking for them in our own paranoia.  How many times do we feel we are having a bad day and are just waiting for the next thing to go wrong?

Where it all ends up is a prejudiced perception – that the thorns (bad things) are amplified to us to the extent we are rendered blind to anything else. Whilst we may not realise it, many good things happen to all of us each day, but if there is one bad thing, even small, it is etched into our memory and all the good is discarded. We explicitly fail to see the roses (the good things) and miss out on the virtues they bring life.

So, these last several days, I’ve been out in the field and would like to share some of the roses I’ve come across. They are all written as short personal accounts, see if you spot the roses (some are obvious, others subtle). At the end of each day’s account, I will reveal them.

Wednesday 24th

On the way home courtesy of Metlink and a train stuffed like the proverbial tin of sardines. A youth I’d just watched jump the ticket barriers pushed on at Hawksburn and I was entertaining the idea of asking him to mow my lawn and seal my envelopes, because, as you all know, fare evaders should help out ticket holders around the house.

Then, just as the doors were closing, an old man of about 85 got on. I hear two women behind me saying “someone should give him a seat” under their breath. As the packed carriage jolted into motion, the old man lost his balance and almost fell over. A few passengers gasp falsely, something which irritates me to no avail, and still no one gives up a seat, there isn’t even a hand rail for him to hold onto. Then, an Anglo-Indian fellow, in his late twenties, himself without a seat or rail, smiles at the old man and holds out his arm for the old man to grab hold of. I do not know if anyone else even noticed. A few stops later, I spot a seat and shotgun it, and I beckon to the old man; “there’s a free seat for you here sir!” and he gives his profuse gratitude to the other man, sits down and thanks me.

Roses Revealed

Compassion. It is strikingly obvious here, but the young man’s offer of help to the old man is compassion in its purest form. It seems like something so small and effortless, but only one person thinks to do it. All those around him pretended he wasn’t there, absorbed with themselves, or feigned concern when they could have just offered their seat. I doubt anyone else in the carriage apart from the old man would remember it happening a week later, but this is a shining example of a rose in a field of thorns. It was uplifting to witness and gave me a wonderful feeling of reassurance that there are still people out there who do care.

Thursday 25th

This was one of those days, the celestial alignment, for me, I was sure, was way out of whack. Trying to chase up a ticket to the Commerce Ball (that night) at the last minute to no avail, I was admittedly disappointed as a number of friends were going to be there and I wasn’t. Feeling somewhat cheated by fate, yet still optimistic about the after party, I went and did a couple of laps of Albert Park Lake just for the hell of it. Around the stroke of midnight, I roll into Fitzroy St and try to get in touch with Ava to find out where she wanted to meet up. A while later, I get a reply that she can’t make the after party because she had to take a drunk friend home. Another setback, but c’est la vie, a number of my friends were heading to the after party too.

So, after painstakingly parking my car out of reach of drunken student hoodlums, I approach the bouncer at the entrance (without a ticket of course). “Sorry mate, this is a private function, no ticket, no entry.” I didn’t particularly feel like an argument, and was just beginning to turn away when a second bouncer appears and says to me “Looking sharp in that jacket mate, head on up.” Then it was a good 3 hours of chatting to mates, having a couple of shots, a lot of dancing and even more analysis. A great night considering.

Now 3:30am, I head off with ears ringing, well and truly danced out, exhausted. I do not condone drink driving, and accordingly made arrangements to stay the night at Ava’s. Close to 4am, I arrive out the front of the apartment building and give her a call so she can let me in. Minutes later, she’s at the lobby in pyjamas, visibly worn-out after a big night out, but still possessing a chirpy aura. She ushered me up to the dotingly well prepared spare room for a few hours shut eye before an early start at university.

Roses Revealed

(1) – Selflessness. Although most are disappointed when someone bails, it is admirable that Ava, given a choice, decided to take her friend home instead of enjoying herself at the after party. A good friend always has their priorities right. Many people I know would have called the friend a cab or offloaded the friend on someone else, so they could go to the after party and have a smashing end to an already great night. Ava forwent something she was really looking forward to so she could help out her friend. She could have had fun at a fantastic night at the after party, but instead chose out of caring concern for her friend’s needs.

(2) – Benevolence. The second bouncer could have enforced the policy like his stone-faced buddy, but instead gave a nice complement and let me in without a ticket. I was surprised, yet grateful for the goodwill of the kindly bouncer. To him, it was perhaps just an everyday, random deed, but it made my night.

(3) – Kindness (or maybe sympathy). Who, tired to the bone, gets up at 4am to let someone in? I’d be tempted to leave the phone on silent and continue sleeping peacefully. Ava could have done that (in which case I would’ve have slept in the car), save for her exceptionally nice persona. Again, willingness to put someone else’s needs ahead of your own, even when it is at significant inconvenience, is something I hold in very high esteem.

Friday 26th

Get up late as usual, so shower and prepare for the day in double time. Lateness is inevitable, only variable I can control is its magnitude. Decide I’ll substitute some caffeine-laced concoction for breakfast, then pen the still sleeping Ava a quick thank-you note, and rush to the car. Notwithstanding using all the shortcuts and driving in my ‘urban cannonball’ style, I grace the tutorial with my presence at 11:30, half an hour late because some ditz took my favourite parking outside Economics & Commerce.

The day at university was the usual ad-hoc Friday, cruising through the tutorials having done only half the work and battling to keep myself from dozing off in investments. Of course, my indolence got the better of me and I walked out halfway through so I could get a jump on peak hour traffic, get home, and get some rest.

Feeling refreshed a few hours of sleep later, I power up the laptop with the intention of starting on coursework, but naturally get distracted, chatting to Lulu on MSN. An introduction is warranted at this point, but Lulu is very difficult to portray. Let’s just say that although she’s on the other side of the world; on/in my high frequency wavelength/neighbourhood, she lives right across the street. Someone of incredible depth and altruistic to an almost divine extent best describe her.

Chatting with Lulu, the topic moves to life becoming an obstacle to itself, I proceeding to criticize all the false meaning in life, disillusioned with the fact that we are born cursed with the imperative of working most of our lives just to ‘live’. I mention to her that I’d happily trade the goals of making money, getting top marks, a fast track career and more possessions for a lifetime permit to lay in a field of green grass under a sunbeam and stare up at the clouds. Paradox is of course that only rich people have such luxuries, or you have to play by the twisted conventions in the hope you can have a few years of it in retirement. We end in an anticlimax of sorts as I have to go pick up pizza. Later that night (around 10pm) I get a really nice ‘cheering up’ (read: anti-disillusionment) email from Lulu, and a picture she’d drawn me.

Roses Revealed

(1) – Altruism. As I told Lulu the following day, my heart almost burst when I looked at her picture. It is beyond my understanding how someone could be so astonishingly sweet to do what she did. Despite the fact she hardly sleeps, at 7am her time, she was still awake, drawing me a picture of a green field on Paint, just to do something nice. I feel an incredible debt toward Lulu because she lives her life with almost no regard for herself and is always helping out other people, some she doesn’t even know, out of the goodness of her heart. It is instances such as this where I’m utterly bowled over by something, that restores my faith that there is hope for our kind yet.

In closing, this skewed perspectives paradigm is holding us back. Dominated by the paradigm, we find it very hard to see the rose among thorns, it is elusive and indeed, almost invisible to us. And if we cannot see them, it makes it virtually impossible to propagate them. Were we to learn to stop focussing and worrying on the thorns, we would become attuned to what the roses truly look like. Then of course, we could stop to admire their beauty, delight when we find one, and perhaps even start consciously planting our own so other people can share the happiness.

It could be small and insignificant to you, but a kind word or good deed can brighten someone else’s day immeasurably. Something to keep in mind whilst traversing the field of life.

~ by X on September 2, 2005.