Sweet Miracles

I learnt something valuable at work today. Thanks to a “nuisance call” from a recipient of SY’s food rations that i happened to pick up (prob cos my colleague didn’t want to). The whole event is a bit too lengthy to type out here and i have already regurgitated the details to Mr Gua Gua sufficiently to feel pretty satisfied abt it. I’ll just cut the story short and leave out most of the details. 

I only had one client today and since it’s Sat, i didn’t have much work to do, i had the opportunity to listen to this particular’s man’s “sob story”. I really bought into his story. I often give pple the benefit of the doubt and assume they will be telling the truth, unless i have sufficient evidence to tell me otherwise. And given tt he was telling me of his genuine life situation, i was astounded that there are actually pple like him in Singapore who are living in such miserable conditions. It’s not that i believe everyone here is living in comfortable conditions of cos… yes, i do know one-room flats exists and stuff, and some pple get hardly more than a meal to eat. But I did assume that they do still get at least one meal, be it even just plain rice. Yet, this man and other pple he knew were suriving on dustbin scraps and root veggies they managed to grow in some soil.

And so, even though food rations is totally not within my job scope and this is absolutely none of my business, i was moved enough to agree to speak on his behalf to my colleague who is i/c. She very openly shared with me her side of her story, where this man basically took on the role as an extremely demanding and troublesome man who has a really notoriously bad reputation in the social service field. As i listened to her points, i was again taken aback by how different this man seem to be now, and i really wondered if he was just playing on my sympathies with a pack of lies.

I regretted my promise to call him back. My colleague said, he’s just giving me all kinds of stories and basically told me not to bother abt him. However, a promise is a promise. Being one who hates other pple breaking promises, i didn’t intend to break my own. So 10 min before my work ended, i called him back at least to report to him about his status, hoping he wld accept it and not give me a hard time.

He was still pretty pissed abt the whole situation. But he really appreciated the fact that i called him back and unlike my colleague, i bothered to listen to him, and so i dared to ask him if he cared to hear the story my colleague gave me. He did. I kinda gave him abt 70% of what my colleague said abt him. I thought he wld get angry and scold me for being unhelpful like all the others he has encountered, or he wld get defensive and call my colleague a liar. Or something equally unreasonable and wld convince me that this guy is indeed just one of those troublemakers who take advantage of social welfare.

To my surprise, he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he calmly (and almost patiently, as if he knows i’m just clueless) told me his side of the story in response to my questions, and point by point, he kinda striked them down with seemingly reasonable explanations. In fact, so reasonable that i can’t help but agree with him in my heart that it really does seem as though he has been unfairly treated to some extent.

Believe me, i can be a sucker at times, but in this case, i really felt that this guy was for real, and my initial obligation to fulfill a promise became a genuine interest in this man’s story. I actually did feel comfortable talking to him, cos i feel his pleas for help were coming from his heart and i felt tt it wasn’t merely sympathy that he was asking for, it was understanding as well as respect.

Besides, his background was really miserable enough for me to feel that regardless of how unreasonable he might have been towards other pple (though he seemed perfectly reasonable, and in fact kind and considerate to me), it’s seriously not fair for him to be refused help just cos of his behaviour or attitude.

Well, anyway it’s not just out of sympathy, or some kind of idealistic heroism, but cos i felt some kind of affinity with him, i agreed to appeal for his case even though i didn’t know how i wld do so since i wasn’t close to my colleague at all. However, i did sms someone else, whom this man has also spoken to, and to my surprise, she agreed with me that this guy deserved a 2nd chance, no matter how much trouble he might have caused in the past. She cld not have put it better, “a hungry man is an angry man”.

And so she advised me to speak with my colleague abt him, while she speaks to someone else as well. Hopefully, together we wld be able to help this man get the help he needs and without causing trouble for any more pple.

I was reflecting on this and wondering if i’m just being a busybody, or trying to play hero. I could very well trust my colleague is doing her job and just carry on with my own work. Is it that this man is just such a glib talker, which also made me feel comfy talking to him? Or am i just being overly righteous and naively trying to save everyone out there who has a sob story that i happen to encounter?

Whether or not this sounds cliche or idealistic, this is really how i feel. This man reminded me both in words and in actual encounter that no one ought to be judged. If i had only heard his story the first time round, i wld have thought that my colleague was in the wrong. If i had heard my colleague’s story and then stopped at that without calling him back, i wld have thought my colleague was doing her job and this man is prob a liar. However, after i clarified my colleague’s story with the man, then it seemed to me most likely that somehow in the whole complicated process (and life IS complicated since we all see things in our unique way), misunderstandings occured, with factors probably including distorted perceptions, overly emotional responses, lack of time and opportunity for proper assessment, jumping to conclusions, etc etc. And in the end, the man gets all the blame. Because there was no one to fight for his case, whereas the volunteer and my colleague were able to fight their own case. He was simply the underdog that was shooed away.

Of cos, i don’t deny that i cld be more biased towards him since i had such a long chat with him today, but no matter what, i also feel that help shld be given unconditionally. This man is hungry and needs food. We, being a social service agency, shld give him food, esp since we have the resources. It’s as simple as that. Just because he takes up more time than other needy pple shld mean that he doesn’t deserve food as much as they do.

But i don’t blame my colleague either. I am still new in this field but i have seen many more experienced workers become cynical and somewhat callous and they have prob started off like me. Perhaps they have encountered too many liars, heard too many sob stories. Whatmore, there are so many pple out there who needs help. Why shld you spend so much time and energy just helping this one man when you cld be helping others who make it easier for you to help them?

In fact, if i hadn’t had the time to spare, so i didn’t really mind lending a listening ear to this man (at one point he was so frustrated by my mere talking without offering practical help that he was saying something like, so you very free that you can spend all this time just talking to me to make me feel good? hmm… he wasn’t that far off the mark… ). Cos if i did have things to do, it wld be so easy for me to dismiss him as one of those “crazy” pple who love to harrass others for some weird reason. I don’t often think that way, but there was such a lady client of SY in the past and she was indeed diagnosed as mentally crazy…. so you really never know. Though i did wonder if i cld somehow help her at that time, but i wasn’t within “helping distance”.

See, i am still new in this field and i can still give pple the benefit of the doubt. I also actually feel slightly upset when i see other pple in the field speak abt their clients or service recipients in a derogatory way e.g. “just another old man”, “it’s that lady again”. It makes me wonder why they are in this field, if they don’t see those pple as pple needing help without losing their dignity and self-worth.

But, perhaps if i had worked long enough, seen enough clients who behave in the most disgraceful manner, talked or worked alongaside enough colleagues who have been hardened and cease to see their clients as human beings but more of “cases”, i believe that i might also start to be immune to pple and their sob stories.

Right now, just to even think of that last paragraph possibly becoming reality, it somehow makes my heart ache. Cos if it were really to happen, then pple like this man wld continue to hit dead ends, as pple like us no longer listen to them. Not because we don’t want to. But cos we forgot how.

I keep thinking of how that man said that i was his last resort. Sure, it could be just a clever gimmick to get my ego’s attention, so i can be Wonder Woman and come to the rescue. But i can’t help but think that he might have really tried so many organisations and agencies, and encountered so many pple who prob cld help, but wldn’t, and that i could indeed his last resort. Of cos, if i just went on with my life, he prob wld have survived anyway, somehow. After all, many pple are stronger and more resilient than they give themselves credit for. I didn’t have doubt that this guy, hearing how he has struggled till now, wld continue with his life, no matter how miserable it may seem.

However, it wld be for myself that i wld have felt sad for. Cos i have set it my life purpose to help others, and if i had chosen not to hear this man out, then i have turned away from my own life purpose. Spiritually, i  wld be even poorer than this man, who at least shares his food with other poor pple he knew.

At this point, i don’t care if i have been utterly fooled by this man, cos at the very least, he taught me 2 things. First, not to judge others, cos ultimately, we are all human beings who have the same basic needs. Second, help SHLD be given unconditionally, of cos also with wisdom. This point reminds me of 2 days ago when i encountered a woman who was asking Old Chang Kee customers to buy a curry puff for her. I was in the queue and seeing that she was rejected by 2 pple, i offered to buy it for her. As i was walking away, an old man who saw the scene asked me for a dollar (the price of the curry puff). I quickly smiled at him and walked away. Why didn’t i give? Well, partly cos i only had one large bill in my wallet and no coins, and partly cos i didn’t know if he really needed the dollar, or just teasing me abt helping that woman, and what he wld have done with the dollar. When i boarded the bus, my transitlink card’s remaining value was $7.77, so i took that as a sign that the universe was in agreement with something i just did.

Ok, this is a pretty long rambling reflection, but just one last thing. And that’s abt the title i chose for this entry. I also shared this with Mr Gua Gua, but i feel so strongly abt this that i still wanna blog abt this. Abt sob stories. This phrase has become quite a negative one, and if someone says, ah, another sob story, the listener kinda gets that the person telling the story need not be taken seriously. But why not? They aren’t called sob stories for nothing right? They must have made the person in that story, and prob others sob before. Even if they are told over and over again. Even if the narrator is really boring or annoying or self-pitying. Even if they are narrated just to elicit a certain response, be it sympathy or food or money. Why shld we dismiss it as if it’s a pack of lies if it’s not? The narrator must have suffered in some way or other, and the sob story is just a way of calling for help. Even if it’s just sympathy. Perhaps that’s what they need to gather the courage to move on. Even if they are seemingly hopeless and just can’t “get on with it”, being harsh and judgmental of them sure ain’t gonna help them in any way.

Mr Gua Gua really summed it up well when he heard my sharing of what happened today. There are always two sides to a coin. And to add on, neither side is right. Or rather, the the side that is facing up is always right. If we accept the person’s story as his or her truths, see it through their eyes, then we might just figure out why the person has become so annoyingly self-pitying and repetitive and desperate. And then, we might open our hearts even more, enough to do more than just judge and condemn.

I hope these lessons taught to me by this man will always stay with me. Thanks, Mr Y, and the universe, for bringing these impt lessons to me.