I had ended work late due to a last mintue project and had to take the crowded bus along jammed expressway to get to the library. So I endured the ride, finally got to the library half an hour before closing. I dropped off my books, decided not to get anything and left the place, briskly walking towards the bus stop. This journey is one that passes by the mall, goes through the MRT interchange, goes across a road and then goes along a long covered walkway which connected the bus interchange to my bus stop.

It is also a journey I've been making for ages, the sort of routinal walk which that allows your thoughts to fade into day dreams and stuff because your footsteps already know what to do. Then, my day dreams and stuff were about the slightly vexed feelings I had of how much time I had wasted on the bus ride from my office to the library just so I could return my overdue books.

So, with a head filled with that slight resentment, it was about a few seconds later that my brain could register that there was a busker playing the guitar and singing a song along the walkway. A few seconds later- meant that I was several footsteps away from him when I realised that he was really good, and several footsteps almost nearing the bus stop when I had the dilemma whether to walk back to show my appreciation monetarily.

And it was probably after I sat at the bus stop to wait for my bus that I pondered over my entire thought process with regard to that busker that I felt the feelings of guilt, regret and shame sink in slowly.

Its very strange how conclusions about the human condition are realised through personal incidents like this. In this particular case, it reveals the strange social awkwardness of walking back to the busker just to show your monetary appreciation after you've walked a distance away. In a more literary light, it can be described as a fear of taking a second chance. (But to be less philosophical and more blunt, it can be a just simple social commentary on mindlessness of societal values/memes of 'saving face' and 'keep being on the move')

The above account was probably more felt by me because I had not saw the busker in numbers, but as an actual person who was there. He was blessed with a good voice and very proficient with the guitar (I thought over the amount of effort and perserverence needed to reach that level despite his being blind)

Feelings are felt more intensely when its over just one person rather than when its over a number of them. Oddly its a single person that would mean the world to someone, but never the world itself.

Journalists have both figured out and illustrated this concept through their technique in moving heartstrings - finding a face to the tragedy. A Mr Lim who struggles to feed his family of five in the financial crisis through part-time jobs, after losing his job in a foreign firm. A 12 year old Pramana who was accused of stealing cigarettes from a shop owner in central Java, and detained for 17 days. A narrative in Time or Newsweek about the story of a particular single mother who entered the sex trade to support her child somehow lends the colour, depth and voice to the causes that the world needs to deal with today.

Maybe its because we can't love humanity personally or care for it in any exclusive way. Perhaps the way most people learn to love fiercely is first through getting themselves lost in their emotions. This happens when personal tragedy, however egocentrically indulgent that tragedy may be, lashes them into realisations of the deeper and broader application of love.

But if thats the way human perception work - I thank God that its a beautiful way of managing the reality of how we progress from self-centeredness to a place when we attempt not to be so selfish. We learn from it and know from it, since it was personal.

In this sense, the Christian concept of surrender of self and denying ourselves is not really all that religious. It would be a matter of salvation, yes. But its also a matter of understanding a part of life.


Conclusions about the human condition always lead us back to the basic lessons anyway, and in this case, the next time I am seconds too late- I will stop, walk back naturally to the person, and show that bit of appreciation with sincerity.


"We see everthing in a glass, darkly. Sometimes we can peer through the glass clean, we'd see much more. But then we would no longer see ourselves."
-- Jostein Gaarder, Through a Glass, Darkly

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