Everywhere wi turn, makka jook wi
HELLO, MI neighbour! If you are not aurally challenged you would have heard good, great, pleasant, mystifying and disturbing stories over the past 24 hours. These stories would have affected you negatively or positively.
Negative stories usually take a greater toll on the well-thinking, humanitarian type than the callus and unfeeling. The fact that bad news is not reversible tends to exacerbate its effect on the listener or the witness. As an outlet, many weep with those who weep, and mourn with those who mourn. Thankfully, such commiseration often helps to soothe the pain of the victims of man’s inhumanity to man.
To watch neighbours rally around hurting family members grappling with the loss of a loved one, especially under tragic circumstances, warms the heart. To hold a hand or hug a hurting person is often an awesome source of strength for him/her. Matters not whether the gesture comes from friends, relatives or strangers. The instinctive touch, intended to comfort, indicates an understanding of our connectivity as human beings. To behave contrary to helping the hurting is not only selfish, but demonic.
Selfishness and demonic activities are heart hardeners which prevent the heart from showing compassion to a hurting person. Who can soften these hearts? Only God. Until such time, coldness, barbarism and insidious wickedness will continue to destroy our society. Help, Lord!
Look at what greed and selfishness has done to us: the overturning of a truck transporting flour from Kingston to another parish, hurting or killing the driver and others, is good news for flourhunger, cold-hearted people. Instead of assisting the victims they grab for flour, claiming it to be a blessing. “They shall call good evil and evil good.” (see Bible). As the end draws near – not being a doomsday pessimist – everything including humanity, will become more and more deadly! Across our world, hatred has replaced love, cruelty has replaced kindness and the callus has found more pleasure in taking lives than saving them. There really seems to be ‘no hiding place down here’.
... LET’S REPLACE THE BAD NEWS
Everywhere we turn, makka jook wi. Whether we are upper, middle, low or no class, we are all affected by man-made or natural disasters. Mudslide is mudslide, whether it’s in California or Jamaica! The recent California fire which destroyed more than a thousand homes, killing men women and children in its path, was no hotter than the recent fire in eastern Kingston; and I could go on talking about the equalising circumstance which we all face on this planet, but I’ll make this point: we must all recognise that we are all faced with the same set of dilemmas and must do unto others as we would have them do unto us!
Let’s replace the bad news people expect to hear on a daily basis to truly good news, by living up to our duty to love our neighbours as ourselves and to do unto them as we would have them do unto us in these trying times. Until next time, peace and love, mi neighbour.