In the previous two posts I wrote about the worst and best feelings in the world. This third installment is about giving help for those who cannot help themselves and those who have become ostracised by the people around them. The link may seem unclear, but it will become obvious later.
The helpless
1 In my earliest days with the Army I had a buddy. We were all fresh out of school and were being introduced to the tough guy's ways, but buddy did not submit to those values and suffered for it. Eventually we just found it strange when he wept over confinement weekends or extra push-ups or other trivial distractions of the same streak. He talked to me about his feelings often. Perhaps he came to me because I was the only one around who seemed fit for talking as the others shunned him. I often thought of abandoning buddy also, because I found his concerns trivial and felt that he was holding me back. I struggled with this thought for seven months, until finally he got himself transferred to a happier place. These days I see him around in school occasionally.
(To be honest now, I think many of the values they put me through in my formation were merely secondary [read: bullshit]. They seemed to suggest the purpose of our training was for pride and our reward is to strut around the square with a red thingimmabob on our heads that tells the whole world how good we are. Counterproposal: the training is its own reward. Take note, my dear guy juniors.)
2 In my earliest days with GENUS I had another buddy. We were in the workshop together and he had difficulty picking up the guitar. He stuck with me often, with what little help and support I had to offer. For the time that he played in the ensemble, we were paired up. When he asked the others for help, they told me to do it. Then after a few months, just as the army buddy did, he faded away from the ensemble. He still buys tickets from me, one lonely ticket every semester.
They were the helpless people who came to me looking for help, and I must have disappointed them often: I who understood only strength, and not weakness.
The pariahs
The pariahs are people who have distanced themselves from a particular social circle and whose behaviour has invited derision.
3 The pariah in my course comes from China, and is a hardworking fellow, taking up two majors and an unreasonable work schedule. Lately the local clique brought it up to me that he wore the same clothes for four days in a row, and people were falling sick when they sat around him. I played with talking behind his back for awhile, until I told a friend about it and he reprimanded me.
Strictly speaking, he reprimanded the local clique's actions, but I was complicit in it and so was reprimanded by extension.
I have made peace with him. At least I hope there has always been peace between us. I am shedding that parasitic tendency to avoid talking to him, like what the other locals are doing. This little incident brings me to the other pariah case.
4 I have known the ensemble pariah from the earliest days there. At that time, we played in the same section. He was one of the better ones on the instrument. He had strange mannerisms and was always very self-absorbed. Later on he joined another group in addition to the ensemble, and he grew distant. And as he grew distant, so the derision started and the folks talked behind his back i.e. without him ever knowing. They have been ruminating delightfully on ensemble pariah rumours to this day. I watched as a few influential members of the group turned the ensemble and my juniors against him. I sat and ate with those people. I laughed with their jokes. I went sick to the core.
I realised I was turned against him against my will. I had become guilty too in excluding him from the group, I who used to know him so well, just to get in my friends' good books. I am ashamed, I really am.
For the weak ones, I was not determined to help them enough. For the rejects of my social circles, I rejected them also, out of cowardice.
I am now really appreciative of the difficulties for one to avoid committing the sin of omission. The things you are called to do that you neglect, they are so easy to miss... the sacrifices that you have to make, they are so real... Here are perhaps the real tests that God throws at me for my university life. I have always thought that the schoolwork was suspiciously enjoyable.
Time to sleep. I hope that next time I don't treat this space like a confession box.
