What’s your Story?

They look just like your average joe. Or like your father, or mother, even. It’s scary to think about it, but it could have been you or me. Just that this time, it’s them that’s all. It could happen to us tomorrow, the day after. It could happen to our loved ones, too.

They walk in, sit down, you wonder how you could possibly help someone who looks so fine and dandy and then you listen, and see the cracks beneath the veneer.

So, how can I help you today?

She looks perfectly normal, like any middle-aged lady you’d see walking down the street. A little on the plump side, perhaps, and you judge her immediately, critically and unforgivably, for being another mother who could do with a little more exercise and self-care.

But then you find out she walks slow because she had an operation to remove the cervical cancer last year, the monster which took away her plans to have more children. The doctors told her early on, but she sat on the cancer for two whole years because “I just could not accept it.” You want to dismiss her as being silly, but you forget, sometimes things happen at bad times. People take time.

And oh, yes, by the way, she’s here because after the cancer, she found out her husband hid an affair from her for nearly a decade, and her entire extended family knew but hid it from her. So she’d like some professional help, please. So she can function again because sometimes the headaches get so bad. And oh yes, so she can be strong for her children and so she doesn’t get any suicidal ideations.

A young man comes in with his elderly mother. He looks like… he’s my age. He smiles, he’s rather charming actually. Then his mother tells you her son’s been telling her that people are spying on him. He drinks a bottle of cough syrup a day to cope. Her other son has schizophrenia, too. They don’t know how to cope-he’s just had a baby, schizophrenia is debilitating, chronic and progressive. They come from a low-income family. He still works at an IT firm, but he’s not sure if he can work anymore.

They look just like your average mother-and-son.

Then of course, you meet the occasional person whose appearance screams out. She’s dressed in gothic black with a shock of crimson hair, has multiple tattoos, a piercing in her lip, and two previous abortions. She looks haggard, old even, but she’s only twenty or so. You really want to judge her, but can you blame her if she was brought up in a dysfunctional family which abused her?

They all look normal. But one has schizophrenia, the other a depressive disorder, still another a borderline personality disorder. I’m doing my psychiatric posting now. I’m learning, that it’s so easy to reach out to the obviously needy and disadvantaged, but do we not realise, that these normal-looking people with issues, problems and illnesses are all around us.

How our inconsistencies baffle me.

One moment, we’re waxing lyrical about how much we really ought to help the poor, the needy, the disadvantaged, but the next, we’re murmurring about some petty injustice done unto us by a friend or family, simmering with irritation or bristling with annoyance. And so often we forget, how nothing is ever what it seems, that people have illnesses and problems you will never be able to tell just by looking at them.

It seems to me, that for most, it’s a lot easier to extend grace to someone we think deserving enough to earn it. It’s hard to love normal people, friends or family who may ruffle our feathers. It’s a lot simpler to love someone whom we bear no record of grudges, whose poverty is worn right there on his sleeve.

How chillingly inconsistent we can be.

And this disturbs me because it seems we have not understood the weight of what it means to always, always extend help to the poor and needy. It seems we have not unveiled our eyes to the immense poverty we have in riches, the invisible distracted by the visible. We are cordial to outsiders, callous at home; polite to strangers but brisk with our loved ones; generous to villagers and mercenary to our fellow urbanfolk. How can this be.

It seems, we find it easy to love when the evidence of poverty is apparent. And why are we most unforgiving to those closest to us.

I am learning, life is full of the unspoken, the invisible. And in some way, we are all blind. Blind to the poverty and the neediness of each and every individual, simply because pride and judgement are heavy veils. I am learning, how not to judge, how to give others the benefit of the doubt, how to love with empathy.

I don’t know when it was that I stopped looking for seats on the train anymore. Once, I gave up my seat for an elderly woman, only to have her give it up for her young daughter in her twenties, who looked perfectly normal if not a little grim. I talked with her. She just found out she has thrombocytopenia or a low blood platelet count. She feels incredibly weak and depressed all the time. She really, really needed a seat on that train. Who would have known?

So I’ve stopped looking for seats on trains, and have learnt the joy of reading while standing. I’ve learnt to enjoy sitting on seats which face the back of buses, because I’ve met people who just hate those seats because they make them puke. I happen to like going backwards on a bus- I find it rather poetic to watch life from a different perspective.

If only we knew the Stories behind each perfectly normal-looking individual, we may love more deeply, show more grace, extend a kinder helping hand. And perhaps, the same goes for our loved ones, too. For have we considered that for every grudge we bear against their faults, they too could have a terrible cloud behind them too? We just assume they don’t. And so we judge, bear grudges and hate the very ones we ought to love.

I am learning, that things are never what they seem- Perfect and Normal rarely are who they are thought to be. I am learning, that even in Singapore (or especially so), we are living among the Poor. I am learning, that in some way, you and I are poor and needy, too.

I am learning, still.