爱心变了质

潘君琴 from MyPaper (5th June 2008) has written a short entry on “你捐了吗” (“Have you donated?”). She mentioned that this is a common introductory phrase lately in China. (It used to be “你吃过了吗？” which means “Have you eaten?”)

Somehow she reminded me of an incident my mum recounted previously. My mum was querying for some travel arrangements when the representative suddenly asked if she watched the charity show that day. When my mum replied “No”, she immediately conclude my mum doesn’t have sufficient compassion for not watching, before next asking if my mum did donate. I do wonder if my mum had replied “No”, what is her final conclusion going to be?

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t donate. To donate is your personal preference. How you wish to donate is also your personal preference. Lastly, the amount you donate is also your personal preference. I just don’t like the fact that everybody is just judging everybody else by the action and the amount. There are other ways one could contribute. True at times I feel so ashamed of myself because I find my donation a paltry sum compared to what others have donated but that is comparing me with others, which is another matter entirely.

Anyway lately, I have also been thinking how much compassion we have (not with respect to the natural disasters). While reading news, I realized that lately people have a tendency to swipe out their handphone to take a photo to send to Stomp for news. I am ok with people wanting to be ad-hoc “reporter”, to share quirky scenes and first hand news. But recently I remember seeing a photo of a motorcyclist banging into another vehicle and it occurred to me, when the photographer had taken out his/her handphone, did he/she first call the emergency helpline or did he/she take a photo first?

GA, if ever one day, I used my camera-phone irresponsibly, I promise never to own another camera-phone. To take a photo instead of rendering help, pains me.