by Goh Keat Peng
My mind and heart is so weighed down by that tragic end of a life merely beginning and so harshly and cruelly snuffed out by wicked grown-ups. How can this be allowed to happen?
The sudden loss of life in unexpected circumstances is always tragic. Especially when it happens to a precious child. In this case a mere six-year old boy. His only crime was to have left the relative safety of the family car to seek parental help for a younger crying sibling. JUST LIKE THAT.
Once more we as part of the human race is plunged into regrets, self-doubts, anguish, a gnawing inconsolable sorrow. Probably the most terrible of human feelings.
This is a time for SOUL-SEARCHING. For each of us. Where each of us is reminded of our own fears, our own sense of guilt, our own lapses, our own anxieties, our own self-examination…
Soul-searching is about myself. It is not an exercise involving finger-pointing at others. The finger is pointed inward to oneself. It is not other-directed. The onus is not placed on others but my own self.
Yes, there is a sympathy, empathy for those directly involved who are suffering indescribably. Even with genuine empathy, we who are looking on from the outside could scarcely comprehend the anguish those directly involved are undergoing and for how long more in time. May GOD’s Presence be upon them.
But soul-searching for myself because such tragedies brings home once again my own carelessness – in the house or on the road … When my action or non action, my concentration and focus lacked discipline and I took risks always against my better judgements which could have so easily resulted in disaster and ruin. Simply because I escaped damaging or killing myself or, worse still, others including my own loved ones… does not mean that I should repeat the very same lack of a presence of mind and, as it were, gambling with chance.
Soul-searching because we owe it especially to those who are unable to fend for themselves, care or look out for themselves. The poor. The disabled. Those who are simply just too young to do so for themselves. GOD have mercy …