Move
A couple of years back i came across a video of Switchfoots Dare you to Move. It was a chunky, simple flash movie that told a simple story - you make the change, you make the decision, do you dare to?
This isn't even similar, it touched me but it did not make me cry like that video (that now i can't find) did. But the song is meaningful and the purpose of the creator of this video is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkFQ3w9VXNM&v3
(sadly, youtube likes to screw up on me and i cant copy the embed.)
I'm not asking anyone to start donating funds, or to start going overseas to dig wells and build houses, but to look and to feel. I don't believe in volunteering for charity homes and programmes, in flag days or fundraising drives. Constantly urging people to raise funds does nothing if they don't help in the little things that count, if they won't give a penny to "uncertified" beggars.
When people donate money they feel they've done a good deed, they've accumulated karma, they feel good. When people help another, for no self-gain or forseeable benefit, that is when one can feel proud. I shirk students asking for flags day donation, i say "sorry no thanks" to people selling pencils and bookmarks. This despite having been in their shoes before, sometimes out of my own free will.
Call me selfish or miserly but i think that when i help an old man up the bus, i'm doing much more good to society than a dollar or two in an aluminium tin would. Obviously, i'm not saying funds aren't required by charitable organisations, but the urgency for it, the significance of materialism is only secondary.
Singapore aims to be a gracious society, popular icons strive to seek religious and spiritual uplifting, weeekly a man named Earl tries to change his karma. The world as we know it is swept up in finding its new identity in seeking a higher meaning to the purpose of life once their material status is stabilised. But the underlying priority of such actions are in the end the promotion of kindness, of compassion and sympathy in our communities.
A community where people help each other in the little things that makes life that much more bearable, that takes only an ounce of your effort and the kindness in your heart. If just a few people could pass on a helping hand, and if the recipients feel touched enough to further pass it on the need for donations and fundings and homes and charities would be reduced greatly. After all would a man with kidney failure need much help from NKF is his friends and relatives chipped in to help, or even donated a kidney to him? Would ex-convicts need funds to create job allocation programmes if people readily accepted them? It is not a certainty, but it is certainly a beautiful idea.
Yet the prettiest pictures can only be painted in the ugliest circumstances when the human mind is pushed so hard it strives to find true beauty in the world. That time is coming, with growing war and horrors inflicted upon the fellow people of the earth by our own hands, we may see our flaws and faults, and theirs. And we will then work to change it, for that is how humanity has passed its course.
By making mistakes, and trying to correct them after its run its painfull toll.
Hopefully we'll realise whats wrong soon, before global warming and AIDS and poverty and all the other growing terrors gain enough momentum to be unstoppable. Theres no running, salvation is here and not anywhere else, for theres nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when the world at large is at stake.
So, dare you move just that one step?
This isn't even similar, it touched me but it did not make me cry like that video (that now i can't find) did. But the song is meaningful and the purpose of the creator of this video is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkFQ3w9VXNM&v3
(sadly, youtube likes to screw up on me and i cant copy the embed.)
I'm not asking anyone to start donating funds, or to start going overseas to dig wells and build houses, but to look and to feel. I don't believe in volunteering for charity homes and programmes, in flag days or fundraising drives. Constantly urging people to raise funds does nothing if they don't help in the little things that count, if they won't give a penny to "uncertified" beggars.
When people donate money they feel they've done a good deed, they've accumulated karma, they feel good. When people help another, for no self-gain or forseeable benefit, that is when one can feel proud. I shirk students asking for flags day donation, i say "sorry no thanks" to people selling pencils and bookmarks. This despite having been in their shoes before, sometimes out of my own free will.
Call me selfish or miserly but i think that when i help an old man up the bus, i'm doing much more good to society than a dollar or two in an aluminium tin would. Obviously, i'm not saying funds aren't required by charitable organisations, but the urgency for it, the significance of materialism is only secondary.
Singapore aims to be a gracious society, popular icons strive to seek religious and spiritual uplifting, weeekly a man named Earl tries to change his karma. The world as we know it is swept up in finding its new identity in seeking a higher meaning to the purpose of life once their material status is stabilised. But the underlying priority of such actions are in the end the promotion of kindness, of compassion and sympathy in our communities.
A community where people help each other in the little things that makes life that much more bearable, that takes only an ounce of your effort and the kindness in your heart. If just a few people could pass on a helping hand, and if the recipients feel touched enough to further pass it on the need for donations and fundings and homes and charities would be reduced greatly. After all would a man with kidney failure need much help from NKF is his friends and relatives chipped in to help, or even donated a kidney to him? Would ex-convicts need funds to create job allocation programmes if people readily accepted them? It is not a certainty, but it is certainly a beautiful idea.
Yet the prettiest pictures can only be painted in the ugliest circumstances when the human mind is pushed so hard it strives to find true beauty in the world. That time is coming, with growing war and horrors inflicted upon the fellow people of the earth by our own hands, we may see our flaws and faults, and theirs. And we will then work to change it, for that is how humanity has passed its course.
By making mistakes, and trying to correct them after its run its painfull toll.
Hopefully we'll realise whats wrong soon, before global warming and AIDS and poverty and all the other growing terrors gain enough momentum to be unstoppable. Theres no running, salvation is here and not anywhere else, for theres nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, when the world at large is at stake.
So, dare you move just that one step?
posted by slipperdan at 9:23 PM
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