Facts of life

Since the last few months, I noticed something really peculiar in my neighborhood. Each morning, there’s this elderly chinese couple who would go around my residential area on their ‘basikal tua’, digging into each household’s garbage bin, searching for recyclable rubbish. They’d arrange those recyclables that they managed to find on the ‘basikal tua’ at a stop before heading to the next garbage bin. Looking at their determination of performing their daily routine to win some bread and butter, I can’t help but wonder, don’t this elderly lady and her man have children or at least relatives that they could turn to, to seek for helping hands that could at least ease their burden? Could this be a new trend set by the youngsters, who don’t seem to give a damn about the elders in the society? Are our younger generations lack of ‘adab’ and ‘nilai-nilai murni’? Could it be that our society has evolved with the rapid technological advancements that each member of the society has become more self-centred, selfish, and insensitive of their surrounding?

I must admit that I’m amazed by the elderly couple’s determination despite their decaying strengths to gain their hard-earned money. I mean, they could have registered or signed up for the charity thingy held. Instead, this loving couple chose the hard way to win their bread and butter. I salute their effort of upholding their pride and dignity. I guess they’d rather starve than beg for food from others. I just don’t understand why would a number of people within our society (it’s really ashamed to admit that most of them are Malays) would let their pride and dignity down the drain just to earn fast, big, easy money. There are quite a number of beggars at the night market within my residential area, and I’m so embarrassed to find a normal, healthy looking lady in her 30s cradling her baby sitting in the middle of pathway, begging for money. Why couldn’t she think of other ways to earn money for her child? She’s young and healthy. Begging isn’t the best solution to feed her child.

When a couple of elders chose to dig into garbage bin as their main source of income, some young men chose to snatch ladies’ handbags instead. Whatever happened to our generations? Don’t they feel ashamed to learn that the elderly couple would go into the hassle of digging into smelly household disposables in order to collect the recyclables? These old folks should be resting at home, spending their time with their family and not in the streets, collecting recyclables trash. In contrast, the young men would go round the streets aiming for their next snatch victims that worth from RM50-3,000. Is that the price of their pride and dignity? Pride and dignity are two things that money can’t buy, but I guess maybe time has changed the value of the two.

Does this mean that I’m too old to adapt and cope with these changes? I know I’m growing older (hopefully more wiser too) but I’m sure that the value of pride and dignity shouldn’t decay with time. It should stay intact no matter what era where are in.