Perception Of A Childs Eyes

A confused 12 years old not quite feeling right within the body I found myself looking through old eyes at the passing squatter camps. I looked upon the shanty towns, tin shacks, the smell of the morning fires tickling my nose and the flames going up into the dawn air. As I watched it pass sitting in the car on the hour long journey to school after yet another weekend with mothers boyfriend in a far off town. I found myself enveloped in wealth of sadness as tears ran down my cheeks.

What the hell is going on in the world? Why do so many seem to think only of themselves?

Don’t people realise that there are people, kids, humans starving? Don’t people realise that people are homeless, without shelter or blankets? What the hell is going on in this world?

Disease! Wars! Terror! Death!

Don’t people see how much the world needs help? Love? Hope? Doesn’t anyone else feel saddened by what I've seen? Don’t they suffer like I do knowing that there are so many without what I have?

It wasn’t the first time the tears ran down my 12 year old cheeks and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I could not fathom why people just didn’t seem to care and as I sat there day in and day out I came up with different ways to help the people living in those tin shacks, the people who use open fires to cook their porridge for breakfast, walk miles to just get some cooking water never mind a bath, they don’t know what baths are. I swore to myself that one day I was going to help the people in the world, that I would do all I can and not just sit by like everyone else seemed to.

During the week when we were home I would walk the 5km home with my younger brother in tow and pass homeless children and adults. Each time we passed them I felt the sadness fill my soul once more, I wanted to start helping them but I was scared, what if I did it wrong? What if the bigger people got angry with me?

After a few weeks walking past them I couldn’t take it anymore, I stopped and stood in front of a little girl. I looked at her, she was so tiny, her clothes torn, the sadness within her young eyes broke my courage free. As I bent down to take off my socks the smell of the streets permeated my whole being, she was hungry and cold. Socks in my hand I passed them to her and showed her how to put them on her feet. I will never forget her smile for as long as I live, she seemed to lighten. My used socks were the first gift she had ever received.

My socks made a difference and I decided right then and there that I would carry a pair of clean ones where ever I went from then on. I also decided that I would take some of mothers money and buy chocolates and crisps for the people I passed.

There were times that people passing by such scenes, well dressed and warm, fed and plump. They would tell me to leave the people alone, that I must go home and not worry about them, that it was their choice, that they should just get up and get work. I would look at them with silence, finish what I was doing and only once the people who had stopped had left would I continue home. I was not going to let them win, deep in my heart and soul I knew that they were wrong and it broke my heart.

I learnt a hard lesson every time someone tried to make me stop. I learnt that humans don’t see the world as I do, they don’t understand, they don’t care or try to do something even if its only small. I decided that I was going to continue as I did, that I wasn’t going to stop doing something that felt a part of me. I accepted that people were different and that some were just too busy in their own warm fully fed lives to see, that people felt guilt if they opened their eyes.

I felt strange and odd, I felt a misfit, an alien in the world. People always looking at me funny, telling me that I was different and not normal. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stop the intense tight knot of sadness in my stomach. I couldn’t stop the tears that flowed down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop wanting to make a difference but I was going to do it quietly and without witnesses because the others as I now called them put other meanings to what I did.

Many years have passed since that time and the sadness still sits in my stomach like a big volcano. It simmers and bubbles away, overflowing when I watch the news, read a newspaper, see someone in pain or experiencing hard times.

The now is no different than the then except with one huge exception. The me in the present now knows of others that feel and do as I do, of people who cry tears for the world and use their souls to cast light upon the world. There are many of them and I have been blessed to be shown that they exist, better yet these people are my friends whom I hold dear within the walls of my heart.

No act of kindness is too small

No act of love too great

Together we might not be able to solve all the worlds problems, we might not be able to feed every starving soul or clothe them, put them in a warm house or teach them to read.

What stops us?