Source : Google photo
Synopsis:
People say the Christmas season is for caring and sharing but people who care
and share do not wait for any season nor should you. Some are outright scrooges
who show no empathy for anyone but you ought not to be like them if you have
any humanity left in you.
It is the Christmas season so many if not all people decorate their houses and even the garden and trees with Christmas lights that blink and put up a great show in myriads of colors. Inside their home, they put up Christmas trees that they decorate with colorful lights and shiny things because they believe that such decorations bring joy and remind them of the season in a graphic way. They pile up Christmas presents at the base of the tree that they open at a certain time.
But these are the same people who do not like carolers at
their gate so chase them away or shut their door to their face so today I
thought that I should write about what the spirit of Christmas is. Is it just
in the expensive decorations and the tree or is it in your heart that you open
up to the poor people who come to your door and sing carols to cheer you up?
There was a tragic case of a very rich man who spent
lavishly to decorate his huge house every season but one night the cheap
Chinese lights got over heated and burst into flame that soon engulfed his
house while his daughter was in her room in the second floor totally unaware of
what was happening. When she realized that she was trapped and could not escape
the fire that soon reached the second floor, she frantically called for help
using her cell phone but it was too late. She was burned to death alive.
Such rich people live in walled communities with security
guards at the gate where no outsider is admitted easily because these rich
people do not have the real Christmas spirit but want to show off that they can
afford to spend great sums of money this way.
I see this sort of people who live here in the community
where I live. They pretend to be Christians but are some of the meanest people
you can find anywhere but they ask us why we do not put up Christmas lights in
our house. Our answer to them is that the spirit of Christmas lies not in
lights and decorations but in our heart because my wife never turns away anyone
who comes to our gate Christmas or not because she is an angel who has a pure
heart full of empathy for the less fortunate.
From what I have observed in many countries where
Christmas is celebrated is that not many people follow the teachings of Jesus
who said that we should always help those in need not only during this season
but always. The outward show of wealth and opulence while ignoring the plight
of the poor is sadly seen in people who show no empathy for the fellow beings.
Once I was told by someone in India that what
the use of wealth is if you do not show it. I was very much shocked by this
comment but kept my silence because I could not change the heart of such people
no matter how hard I tried. They lacked empathy.
Once an American woman was involved in a road accident
when we were in Haiti who was brought to the local hospital. We had met her
only once before but late at night a small girl came to our house with a note
scribbled on a dirty piece of paper that said that the woman needed our help.
We rushed to the hospital to find her in dirty condition so we brought her and
her companion home and tried to make them as comfortable as we could. My wife
washed their clothes and fed them chicken broth spoon by spoon. The next day we
took them to the clinic run by the missionaries to get them x rayed and checked
by doctors. I also called their employer to come to our place to pick them up
and give them all the medical help they needed.
The American mission women asked us why we helped the
women whom we did not know that shocked us more than anything. They were
supposed to practice what their religion teaches them but they showed a
complete disregard to a person needing help because they did not know her. They
lacked empathy. (Please read my blog called What is Apathy and Empathy here)
Fortunately not all people behave this way. I have met
many kind hearted people in many countries who have helped me when they saw
that I needed help. Such people strengthen my faith in the basic goodness of
the humanity although there will always be the scrooges with stone heart.
Once I was just walking down the street in the evening in
the small town in California where I was a student. I was very surprised when a
gentleman came out of his house and invited me to share his Thanksgiving dinner
with him and his family. This sort of thing rarely happens in any country but
it proved that there are so many good people in this world who are genuinely
good and who practice what their faith teaches them.
Source: Google photo of the Little match girl
One story of Hans Christian Andersen has particularly
impressed me since I was very young so much so that it is engraved in my memory
because he wrote about the lack of empathy in the heart of people in so graphic
a manner. He wrote that a very small girl in dirty rags and bare feet took
shelter in the nook of a porch of a big house because she had nowhere to go and
no one gave her shelter from the freezing cold and snow everywhere. She was
shivering because she had no warm clothes to protect her from the bitter cold
but she had just a match box with a few sticks in it. So she lit one match
stick at a time to feel a little warmth until she ran out of the match sticks.
The next morning people passing by saw a little girl frozen solid still holding
the match box in her tiny hand.
This world is full of little girls and boys who are
crying out for help but the bad people kidnap them to sell them to the brothels
or as slaves. There are millions of people who are asking for help because they
have no home, no food and no one to take care of them. They are the victims or
war, of famine or other natural calamities so they ask for help. There are many
NGOs that help them and some great musicians have raised a lot of money to help
during the famine in Ethiopia but it is never enough because it does not reach
all the people in time who are suffering so it becomes a case of too little too
late.
There should be no season for caring and sharing because
you do not need an excuse like Christmas to show your care and concern. If you
have a big heart and have empathy for the poor and the unfortunate people then
you do not wait for any excuse. You just help without asking questions.
This is what I like about the Sikhs. They feed you every
day in the Golden temple in Amritsar but they never ask you what is your religion,
caste or creed so thousands of people are fed by them every day because they
say that it is their religious duty. Many Hindu temples in India also feed
people without questions. They also provide free food and lodgings to anyone
who needs it in holy places like Rishikesh and Haridwar.
It is said that the best help is the anonymous help
because once you start feeling good and take credit for something you have done
for others, it diminishes the value of the help you have given. The religious
books say that we should not let our left hand know what we give with our right
hand meaning we should help anonymously without expecting even a thank you.
So be generous and help those who need it. Don’t be a
scrooge.
Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
La biografía de anil en español.
Comments