The kid who cried Mother!

The parents leaf her at the pre-school cum day care center whether she liked it or not. I only knew this when I heard the small girl bawling away, screaming for her mother and her father to take her home. They tried to persuade the little girl and told her everything was all right, that they will be back to take her home before she knew it. To make matters worse, the teacher slash child-carer told her a whale of a tale just to get her to go inside and shush up. I stood at my window watching the entire scenario and thought how traumatizing it must be for the kid to be caught in a position she doesn’t understand. I could hear from her screaming and wailing that she is afraid of being abandoned with total strangers and must be wondering what she did to deserve that. This harrowing experience went on for a long time with both parents feeling awkward to leave their child there and yet they have to consider their obligations to make ends meet. Eventually, with the help of the teacher slash aide, they left their kid with her continuous pleading and clamoring and drove nervously away. I can almost hear them whispering, ‘this is something we have to do to help her blend in’, and it’s not the first time I’m hearing that too.

The child went on about her lamentation for the longest time she could without passing out. I was so perturbed by the entire hullabaloo I began to question the necessity of forcing children into environments they are not comfortable with. Although they do not have the capacity to evaluate situations or make decisions, I am quite sure they have their instinctive nature to sense the surroundings and know why they don’t belong. Shouldn’t children be allowed to voice their apprehension about something if there was one? It’s only too obvious that communication is not part of this family’s perception, anything more than that … I don’t even want to go there.

Fast-forwarding this scenario to another thirty years, or less, would the child have the right to place her parents in a home if she feels they are beyond her care? Would she be held responsible and judged if her parents plead with her to take them home because they are not used to that kind of environment? Or should she just let the male nurse slash warden take them back inside and tell them everything will be all right? I shudder at the thought.

The system is falling!

The system is falling, the system is falling … and everyone runs helter-skelter to hide from the event of the 21st century and wait at the sidelines to see what gives. Almost every system that I know or read about is going haywire in today’s instantaneous lifestyles. Piracy is deem as P2P sharing, technological gadgets are getting outmoded at the blink of an eye, school students are advancing faster than the teachers can catch on, the hierarchical organizations are on shaky grounds and political bureaucracies are falling apart. It drives some people crazy with desperation just thinking about it, but on the other end of the spectrum another group of people are basking in it. And that leaves the people in between switching sides every five seconds when the tide turns.

I’m wondering if we are prepared for the onslaught of change. Alvin Toffler had the foresight to write a few books about it dating back to 1970, and what he wrote is taking place now like a terrifying science fiction movie. In some countries people are reverting back to reclaim nostalgic moralities, which used to work for their ancestors and are implementing them now, while others who cannot accept the thriving information and communication technology are sabotaging them in more ways than one.

This chaotic syndrome is in need of new systems to supersede the defunct and redundant. But is anyone doing anything about it? Thankfully there are. Though small in quantity some people are beginning to realize the disintegrating tradition, culture and morality, as we know it. Understanding will solve more problems than using force to oppress a nation back into the ideology of 1984 or THX 1138. Whatever future we want to live in, it is now that we must anticipate the wave that is gradually building up and know what we are going to do about it before we are swept away by the failing systems.