A short "essay". Read if you want to.
What Goes Around, Comes Around
A little guilt can go a long way. That is what I learned on the seventh of September this year, when I was on the bus, trying in vain not to watch the hyper way my bus mates acted whenever they were in desperate need of food. It was almost funny to see the way they begged for it sometimes - not like dogs, of course, but they’d sometimes shake my lunchbox and look inside to make sure I wasn’t lying whenever I said I had no food - and it was even more so when they started asking from the girls in the next bus.
We were still within the school grounds when our bus (Bus #3) stopped next to Bus #2. I waved at some of my classmates, barely paying attention to the fact that one of my bus, Raissa, started asking for food from an upperclassman in the next bus. When the said older girl leaned back and then tossed the little pack of Nagaraya from her window to our window, we were suddenly all paying attention. And we paid way more of it when the yellow bag of Nagaraya hit the upper half of the window and fell on the ground.
We were shrieking as loud as typical teenagers did. Who, we thought, would leave behind a free pack of Nagaraya?! However, before any of us could get off the bus to grab the Nagaraya, a little street kid, around five or six years old, who was passing by suddenly bent down, picked up the Nagaraya, passed it to Raissa, and then left as we all stared on, stunned.
More shrieking ensued. “Give the kid the Nagaraya!” was our initial plea, but the bus sped off without warning and our grouchy ‘bus mother’ started glaring at us. We, the girls at the back of the bus, took that as a cue to shut up - which we did, until the shock wore off and we began sobbing about how guilty we felt.
EXAMPLE:
ME: [dramatic sniffling] That was so... so... sweet!
PAOLA: [ditto] Yeah, that street kid just gave back the Nagaraya! Usually other kids would try to steal it, or just ignore it, but... that cute kid just - actually, he’s not cute - gave it back!
TOGETHER: Raissa, you should have given it to the kid!!
ABBY: [joins in] Yeah, Raissa, you should have! How greedy can you get?!
YNA: He was probably way hungrier than you were!
Yes, there was the ‘we’re blaming you because we want to ease the guilt in us’ situation, and Raissa felt horrible, I’m sure. She pretty much started to ignore us, looking at her cellphone and not responding to our calls. Uh-oh.
I study at a private all-girls school which has kept me relatively sheltered all my life, so much that when I leave the country or go to public areas, I am surprised and very fazed by what I see. We students sometimes complain about how ‘poor’ we are when we can’t buy an ice cream cone at the school canteen or when we can’t make libre other students when we want to. Of course, not all are like this, but that’s how it can sometimes be estimated.
Seeing the street child hand the Nagaraya back to my friend made those of us who saw it think about how much we actually have. Our worries are actually very shallow when compared to the situations of people in poorer areas of the Philippines.
That little boy’s act of kindness made me wonder if I had done anything like that to anyone lately. Nothing came to mind.
Later on, we were all still so hungry that we actually ended up buying chicharon from a street vendor while on the bus. We had no idea that it was prohibited, and when bus mother, annoying as she was, came over and ‘gently’ reprimanded us, Raissa started feeling worse. She rested her head in her hands. First was us bothering her about not giving the food to the kid... and then that?!
It was then that Team Rocket made a dramatic entrance.
PAOLA: Hey, Raissa... [pulls out Mr. Chips from lunchbox] If you’re hungry you can have this.
EVERYONE ELSE: O_O
Mr. Chips is, obviously, not a person, because he would obviously not be able to fit into Paola’s lunchbox. Mr. Chips = junk food. Junk food = tortilla chips. If A = B and B = C, then A = C, right?
ME: Yeah! You know, next time you’re hungry, you can just ask. [pulls out a big pack of e-aji]
EVERYONE ELSE: O____O
E-aji is a snack food too, which has no MSG and even dip inside the pack, so that makes it a very wanted food around the bus. And the e-aji bag was around twice as big as Mr. Chips, so the impact was amazing.
EVERYONE ELSE: [to Paola and me] Why didn’t you tell us you had food?!
RAISSA: And we bought the chicharon pa!
ME: [shrugs] You didn’t ask. [is consequently punched in the shoulder by Nicole V] OW!
A little later Paola and I started laughing about how scripted our ‘entrance’ seemed. It’s pretty funny. (During a quiz bee last year, Paola’s group was asked about inclined planes and at the same time we thought, In-CLYNEd planes! During our Literature exam, we wrote about the same poem by William Butler Yeats, and then started getting ‘mad’ at each other because we were ‘reading each other’s minds’.)
The day after, we caught sight of little kids next to our bus while within the school grounds (again). Raissa called out them - quietly so that bus mother wouldn't bite our heads off, handed them the chicharon and Nagaraya, and we heard them laughing, running - generally being so happy at their luck. It wasn’t the kid who helped us, but what goes around, comes around, right? I’m sure he’ll have good fortune soon.
You don't have to be a milionaire in order to change someone's life. Every word we say, every thing we do - they make a difference. I thought that saying was just a lie, but I realized that it wasn't when someone we didn't even know made a simple gesture such as picking up a pack of Nagaraya. We all thought of how lucky we were to be in a private school while some can't even go to school. We have cellphones and iPods (I don't have the latter), while poor people have practically nothing.
Has someone touched your heart today?
A little guilt can go a long way. That is what I learned on the seventh of September this year, when I was on the bus, trying in vain not to watch the hyper way my bus mates acted whenever they were in desperate need of food. It was almost funny to see the way they begged for it sometimes - not like dogs, of course, but they’d sometimes shake my lunchbox and look inside to make sure I wasn’t lying whenever I said I had no food - and it was even more so when they started asking from the girls in the next bus.
We were still within the school grounds when our bus (Bus #3) stopped next to Bus #2. I waved at some of my classmates, barely paying attention to the fact that one of my bus, Raissa, started asking for food from an upperclassman in the next bus. When the said older girl leaned back and then tossed the little pack of Nagaraya from her window to our window, we were suddenly all paying attention. And we paid way more of it when the yellow bag of Nagaraya hit the upper half of the window and fell on the ground.
We were shrieking as loud as typical teenagers did. Who, we thought, would leave behind a free pack of Nagaraya?! However, before any of us could get off the bus to grab the Nagaraya, a little street kid, around five or six years old, who was passing by suddenly bent down, picked up the Nagaraya, passed it to Raissa, and then left as we all stared on, stunned.
More shrieking ensued. “Give the kid the Nagaraya!” was our initial plea, but the bus sped off without warning and our grouchy ‘bus mother’ started glaring at us. We, the girls at the back of the bus, took that as a cue to shut up - which we did, until the shock wore off and we began sobbing about how guilty we felt.
EXAMPLE:
ME: [dramatic sniffling] That was so... so... sweet!
PAOLA: [ditto] Yeah, that street kid just gave back the Nagaraya! Usually other kids would try to steal it, or just ignore it, but... that cute kid just - actually, he’s not cute - gave it back!
TOGETHER: Raissa, you should have given it to the kid!!
ABBY: [joins in] Yeah, Raissa, you should have! How greedy can you get?!
YNA: He was probably way hungrier than you were!
Yes, there was the ‘we’re blaming you because we want to ease the guilt in us’ situation, and Raissa felt horrible, I’m sure. She pretty much started to ignore us, looking at her cellphone and not responding to our calls. Uh-oh.
I study at a private all-girls school which has kept me relatively sheltered all my life, so much that when I leave the country or go to public areas, I am surprised and very fazed by what I see. We students sometimes complain about how ‘poor’ we are when we can’t buy an ice cream cone at the school canteen or when we can’t make libre other students when we want to. Of course, not all are like this, but that’s how it can sometimes be estimated.
Seeing the street child hand the Nagaraya back to my friend made those of us who saw it think about how much we actually have. Our worries are actually very shallow when compared to the situations of people in poorer areas of the Philippines.
That little boy’s act of kindness made me wonder if I had done anything like that to anyone lately. Nothing came to mind.
Later on, we were all still so hungry that we actually ended up buying chicharon from a street vendor while on the bus. We had no idea that it was prohibited, and when bus mother, annoying as she was, came over and ‘gently’ reprimanded us, Raissa started feeling worse. She rested her head in her hands. First was us bothering her about not giving the food to the kid... and then that?!
It was then that Team Rocket made a dramatic entrance.
PAOLA: Hey, Raissa... [pulls out Mr. Chips from lunchbox] If you’re hungry you can have this.
EVERYONE ELSE: O_O
Mr. Chips is, obviously, not a person, because he would obviously not be able to fit into Paola’s lunchbox. Mr. Chips = junk food. Junk food = tortilla chips. If A = B and B = C, then A = C, right?
ME: Yeah! You know, next time you’re hungry, you can just ask. [pulls out a big pack of e-aji]
EVERYONE ELSE: O____O
E-aji is a snack food too, which has no MSG and even dip inside the pack, so that makes it a very wanted food around the bus. And the e-aji bag was around twice as big as Mr. Chips, so the impact was amazing.
EVERYONE ELSE: [to Paola and me] Why didn’t you tell us you had food?!
RAISSA: And we bought the chicharon pa!
ME: [shrugs] You didn’t ask. [is consequently punched in the shoulder by Nicole V] OW!
A little later Paola and I started laughing about how scripted our ‘entrance’ seemed. It’s pretty funny. (During a quiz bee last year, Paola’s group was asked about inclined planes and at the same time we thought, In-CLYNEd planes! During our Literature exam, we wrote about the same poem by William Butler Yeats, and then started getting ‘mad’ at each other because we were ‘reading each other’s minds’.)
The day after, we caught sight of little kids next to our bus while within the school grounds (again). Raissa called out them - quietly so that bus mother wouldn't bite our heads off, handed them the chicharon and Nagaraya, and we heard them laughing, running - generally being so happy at their luck. It wasn’t the kid who helped us, but what goes around, comes around, right? I’m sure he’ll have good fortune soon.
You don't have to be a milionaire in order to change someone's life. Every word we say, every thing we do - they make a difference. I thought that saying was just a lie, but I realized that it wasn't when someone we didn't even know made a simple gesture such as picking up a pack of Nagaraya. We all thought of how lucky we were to be in a private school while some can't even go to school. We have cellphones and iPods (I don't have the latter), while poor people have practically nothing.
Has someone touched your heart today?