Children say many things that make us laugh, or think, just because it’s innocent and come straight from their heart. While I was doing the usual volunteer routine in the orphanage last weekend, I overheard a conversation between two boys around the age of seven and eight, one of them was recently orphaned and was sent to the orphanage because his immediate family could not afford to take him in. He was crying for some reason, and another boy came to him and comfort him. More or less, this is what I heard:
Nathaniel: Why are you crying?
Jason : God take everything away from me. First he took Ah Pa, and now he let them take jie jie away from me. I hate him! Nobody likes me, that is why they send me here. Nobody wants me. I’m alone here.
Nathaniel:They say God make people die because he wants them to accompany him in heaven…we should feel happy for them.
Jason : If I am happy for them, who will be happy for me? I have nobody now. They take my jie away also…
The boy continued sobbing as the other watched him silently, trying to figure out how to comfort him. Obviously, children are not so good at comforting each other the way adult does. They do it in their own little way.
Nathaniel: I don’t think anyone is happy for us here…but you have me. I’m here. I want you here.
Jason: Really?
Nathaniel: Yes, really. I won’t leave you. We’re friends.
Jason: Can I hug you?
Nathaniel: Of course, you’re my friend. Friend hug and listen to each other.
The voices fades away as their conversation became quite unintelligible to me. While others may say that their conversation is not worth mentioning, but to me, it’s something that makes me think, because quite awhile after I overheard their conversation, I learn that the boy who was called Jason was upset not only because of his father’s death, but also her elder sister being taken away from him because she was adopted by a family who wanted a daughter. Nathaniel, on the other hand, lost both of his parents in an accident in just one day. It was said that Nathaniel miraculously survived with only a broken leg in an accident that took both of his parents away.
What touches me is the way the elder boy offer comfort and friendship to a younger boy who is upset when he himself probably have a grief of his own. I’m sure as hell that the elder boy haven’t got over his parents’ death yet, and he’s just putting a brave front.
As I remembered about these two boys I encountered last week, I wonder how many of us can sincerely offer friendship with a shoulder to cry on as well as ears to listen when our friends have problems? In the adult world, almost everything is realistic and materialistic. Real friends who will be there to comfort you when things go wrong as well as lend you an ear when you need someone to listen to you is hard to come by. Hell, some friends even shied away from you when you need help. Not to mention friends who back stab one another to get what they want.
As I remembered the two boys, I silently prayed for their friendship to last, and for God to let them remain children a little longer before they are corrupted by the unscrupulous and materialistic world of adult.
Cleffairy: Children can be cruel, but they also say the sincerest things.
Its a cruel world out there but I am glad that there are someone like you that are doing a volunteer work to help these kids. It is during our down time that we get know who our real friends are. Clef, you are a kind hearted person.
why your blog got emo one almost everyday. haiya!
yes, children will get on your nerves some other day, but they can surely brighten up your life with the simplest words that we adults can never or want to say.
For the bible says in Matthew 19:13-14 “Then little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said “Let the children come to Me, and do not forbid them, for such is the kingdom of heaven”.
I’m not trying to preach here ok…lol. but just want to share with you and your readers.
LOL, pete… I’m not that kindhearted, I have err, some temper that not many can handle. But about being volunteer, let’s just say I was slapped by their hardship that I just can’t stand it not helping. I have encouragement from my hubby too, we both agreed that it’s good to spend time with the unfortunate as we’ll never know when we’ll be in their shoes. Besides, one of the orphanage is just nearby my house. Quite convenient for me. 😛
Calvin… emo only wud… not PMSing. haha…if I was PMSing, I’ll be swearing like a sailor… actually, i wanted to PMS on my blog, but… i think it’s not so good now, because almost everyone I know is kinda ‘heated’ with the political situation in Malaysia. I just heard my boss said “Screw you bastards” when he was reading NSTP. 😛
Anyway, thank you for sharing the verse with us. I didn’t notice this one before…
well, seriously, the society is so twisted now, one does not know what should be done the correct way. u wanna offer a shoulder to cry on, she/he thought u wanna pok mooong(take advantage)…u wanna give the old ladies or the kids a lift, they thought u r a bad hat. so how? lol.
What a touching conversation. Don’t you wonder why as children we are much able to offer love and friendship without any conditions, but as we get older we become more and more wary of offering peace and love?
Let the children be your teachers, I’d say. Unconditional truth and love, that’s what we need more in this world. Not a fountain of youth!
My daughter asked me where i was going yesterday morning. I told her I was going to work. She asked me why, and asked me to stay home. I told her, if I don’t work, I won’t have a salary, hence I can’t buy food. She immediately offered me all the money she had in her little Barney purse so that I do not go to work and stayed home wtih her. I was touched! That was the money she has been saving to buy toys for.
We need to learn to be chilodren again. To learn to simplify life, enjoy making lemons out of lemonades and stop the scheming and plotting.
Sometimes, I miss being a kid 🙂
think i’m gonna cry again…
most of the times children are irritating (to me), but they do have the purest of minds. it is from them that we should learn love and acceptance
i dont want to think that one of them would always like to hug the same gender. hahahaha! sorry, im just joking. but seriously, the other boy should undergo emotional debriefing.
haha, ktx, you’re damn right. The society lack er…trust? Is that it? i supposed everyone is being too careful of one another to loosen up. Whatever we do, it seems wrong, be it we mean well or not. Sad, isn’t it? 🙁
Bigdaddy…what your daughter did was very sweet, and I think a lot of little daughters and sons out there does the same thing most of the time, until one day, they finally understood that the freaking world needs money to actually go round. That’s when their purely innocent thinking was taken away from them. Bigdaddy I missed being a kid too… but looking back, I wouldn’t want to go back to being a kid all over again. I hate homework and not being able to drink coke and eat French fries as I please. LMAO.
u-jean, aww, don’t cry…later your eyes puff. Children are VERY irritating, having worked in a kindergarten as a teacher before almost drives me cuckoo with their screaming antics, but, as you said, I learn a lot of things about life, love and unconditional friendship and the most important lesson, to always be young at heart from them.
Goku, that’s actually how it’s like in an orphanage. And i don’t think they are offering anything more than a normal relationship. The kids there usually are very close to each other and the elder ones are usually very supportive. I guess it’s because they have common ground, not to mention that most actually felt that they only have each other. Actually, I believe the boy was counseled by the chancellors over there , as the orphanage have a network of support group in order to lighten up the trauma that the children experienced, but, these kind of things takes time to heal. I’m quite skeptical that all the children over there can overcome their grief overnight.
When does a child lose his/her innocence?
When they learn that their lies get them off the hook?
sometimes we learn alot from kids.
if only we listen to them..
if not for the egoistic embedded as adults.
it’s hard to find true friends who will dump everything just because u need a shoulder to cry on. it’s easier to win a lottery.
as cruel as some children can be, it can’t be compared with the plots us adults have in mind all the time…
youre right clef. some would take several years to heal… my dog died two years ago but somehow it is still hard to accept it. i still wish that all of these things are just a nightmare.
Hahah…Kevin…I guess it’s when they started to lie lorr, like you said. 😀
Rose, actually everyone is a teacher. Well, at least, to me, everyone is a teacher. There’s something for us to learn from everyone. Real true friend that will share your grief and tears and stand by you when you desperately needed them, yea, they’re really hard to come by. So I guess, that’s what our spouses are for…friends do not take oath to share or happiness and sadness, but our spouse swear to stand by us and cherish us for the rest of our lives. LOL. Children can be pure evil, but of course they are not as despicable as the adults. just look around at what’s going on in our political environment these days…pure evil. 🙁
Goku, yup things like this really take time to heal. My paternal grandmother passed away a few years ago, and I’m still missing her badly. It does not hurt that much, but it’s still there…kinda hard to explain, isn’t it? Those kids who lost their family, i really do not dare to imagine their grief. to overcome their grief in such a short period, that must have take some sort of miracle to accomplish.
Their innocence make you feel enlightened. Orphaned or not orphaned they are all children.
One day my eldest daughter saw, in a tv movie (in Australia not in Malaysia) a kissing scene and she exclaimed “mum the man is eating the lady!!”. Such innocence.
Wish we all behave like children some time in our adult life, so that our world become a better place to live. Our adult life, in Malaysia, are materialistically occupied, politically corrupted and racially consumed, especially now.
Tangkup… sometimes, what children says really makes me think. How simple their world are, and how innocent we used to be until the realistic world beat innocence out of us.
LOL…your daughter actually said that? If i recall correctly, I asked the same thing to my parents when I was younger, and yea, not in Malaysia too…it was in England.I dun remember watching anything that have any kissing scene in Malaysia when I was a little girl. Either it was censored or my parents simply din allow me to watch anything that is too ‘affectionate’ to avoid my questions.
We all can all but hope and pray that Malaysia will be a better place for us to raise our children to be a better person.
Hi Clef. Life in Malaysia is such very highly censored only short of censoring private lives.
My daughter was abt 5 years old at that time and we were holidaying in Australia. Most tv programmes Down Under are “educational oriented”. If children are properly and liberally guided by parents they will become a more tolerant citizens. A lot of prohibitions either from parents or institutions will only make them more rebellious. Certain institutions in Malaysia are “closed” and they produced many “narrow minded” citizens.
The gomen’s Censorship is biased and inorderlies. The movies are highly censored and as you correctly put it any “affectionate” scenes are taboo. I know of 1 sitcom where there is a scene “a boy is touching the shoulder of a girl” and RTM ordered the scene to be removed…LOL. Lo and behold.. the results there are many many unwanted pregnancies among young girls (mostly biased towards 1 community) and babies are left unscrupulously by those involved. Results of disorderly censorship by d Gomen.
Its interesting that Dr Ng, our Minister for Women Affairs, is advocating to introduce, sex education in Malaysian schools, for our a pool of trained teachers, prepared classrooms and equipments and materials and carefully and guidedly implemented. I doubt though this will go through cos there are many perverted men in BN/umnO, who will vehemently and madly go against such proposal. Am sorry I have negative perceptions of leaders of the Gomen: I sincerely believe this proposal will not die of natural death but rather will die being bashed by the perverted leaders in BN/umNO.
“Malaysia Truly Asia” Happy Birthday on 16 September.