Opinion: The Good Samaritan

by Jordis Brown

In our short-sighted way of existing, we as a society have lost the realization that our actions – even those in private – do affect the world around us. We all carry burdens and many of us possess unseen scars from our day to day life. This has impacted us as a whole, to positively affect the community. Your conscience, awareness and empathetic nature has fallen asleep. This is my plea to everyone who reads this…..

Wake Up.

Many years ago there was a young teenage girl who lived with her adult boyfriend. She was naive in every sense of the word. He exploited that to its fullest. There was abuse masqueraded as normal pitfalls in a relationship. There was no guidance or healthy relationship for her to witness so that she could know what was happening was wrong. One night she ran and he followed. Yelling every insult, spewing every threat you could think of at her.

She cried and cried and clutched her pillow and kept walking quickly trying to avoid main streets, feeling afraid and embarrassed. She was simply trying to make it to her parents. She approached the avenue and a stranger stopped her and asked if she was okay. He wasn’t afraid of her boyfriend like she was. He kept repeating himself until she nodded and made an excuse, still embarrassed and still afraid. She made the wrong decision and went back to the house with the boyfriend that night.

Nearly two decades later that short interaction still brought that girl, now a woman, comfort. Faith. It woke her up days later to realize that someone else, a stranger, could see there was something wrong. Why couldn’t she? Her own life and its hardships put her to sleep. Even though they could never be erased, she would no longer allow them to dictate her future.

All thanks to a stranger who he himself was awake enough to see someone needed help.

I want you, the stranger reading this to be happy. We most likely have never met, but I say this sincerely and honestly. Be happy. We affect the world we live in and I want to live in a happier place. I want to see more random smiles from strangers than glares. This community has hardships and not a single person I have ever met – neither very rich nor very poor – has been able to avoid something awful in their life from happening.

Stop punishing yourself, by continuing the cycle of self-pity, doubt, hate…you punish us all. Wake up! Are you with someone that is unchanging? Do they make you a better person or are you miserable? Wake up! Do you turn to drugs or alcohol to fill a void put there by someone in the past, a person who should have loved you, but didn’t. By a memory or by habit? Wake up! If you die tomorrow will it have been a life worth living? Did you notice neglect, abuse, a crime? Does your self-righteous opinion prevent you from doing anything? Do you live as a silent witness who shakes their head and does nothing? You take on what you’ve seen as a personal burden now because you are now as culpable.

The attachments you have in your life might be what has put you asleep to the world around you. Family, friends…..people who are truly happy, often say they feel alive. Awake for the first time. It is very difficult to cut the ties that bind us down, but when we do we fly up to the surface like a bungee cord freed from an anchor. Be a participant, not only in the community, but in your own life. Stop letting your burden dictate your fate.

Please for the love of yourself, for the family you have or the family you want: Wake up.