What might seem like simple things can indeed unravel the whole.
I don't even need to look elsewhere. I just need to look inwards. At the end of another pointless day doing mundane work for an exploitatively small wage, I feel little.
But I can blame the world for that, talk about how stupidly work is organised in this society, how for the sake of a few lines in our résumés we force ourselves to seek 'work experiences' that, in reality, teach us almost nothing.
However, there is something else I can't push away in self-pity—something that might seem much simpler on the face of it, but that might mean a lot to someone else. Something that ultimately means a lot to me as well.
At the end of another pointless day, after an errand done "on the way home" that sent me in a different direction from home, I was wishing that things were better. That was when a woman fell onto her hands and knees on the side of the path just in front of me, without a sound. I even looked. She looked like she might be ill.
And I didn't know what to do, so I walked on as though I was afraid of doing something about it. People walked past. I turned back to look after a short while, but I didn't stop. Perhaps I was hoping that she had gotten up on her own. She hadn't.
At first, after I left the scene, it bothered me a little and I thought to treat it as a lesson learned. "Next time, be sure to offer help when something like this happens."
But I couldn't think of why I couldn't have done that earlier.
Then I thought to myself, "Well, if you're going to be ruthless to get ahead in this world, maybe you shouldn't let this bother you. It was probably nothing serious anyway."
Unfortunately, I couldn't buy that thought for more than a few seconds. It occurred to me that, having walked past, I was no different from the others around me at that time. I am the same. I am the most Singaporean of Singaporeans.
This was like poison in my mind. I realised that I am not different, that I can't look past myself. I feel little. Too little to offer even the simplest of help in a little situation.
What have I got to be proud of? I have lived for a good while and I have failed to really learn anything worthwhile. I realised that, because of this, I can't be anything.
And perhaps that is my real problem—today has proven that, after more than twenty years, I have done nothing.
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