Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Lesson in Life

Being post-call, I slept for a good 6 hours after coming back from work today. And that is why I'm still awake at this hour.
After waking up from sleep, I decided to buy dinner and drop by at the hospital to check on a few patients of mine. One of them is an Orang Asli lady, pregnant for the 6th time, was in labour since yesterday and still undelivered up to now.
I walked into the antenatal ward and spotted her resting on her chair. Beside her was this plastic laundry basket with full of crumpled clothes. I approached her and asked how she's managing her contraction pain. You see, indiginous people like herself have very high pain threshold and that was why she seemed to be so comfortable despite having contractions every 5 minutes.
Well, that's besides the point.
Anyway, as I was saying, I asked her what the basket is for, as I was surprised to see a pregnant lady, in labour, doing laundry at 10 pm at night. She then casually answered that the clothes in her basket were all hers, which she will wear during her stay at this hospital.
My heart was touched. I felt blessed for being able to afford such a comfortable life. People like her can't even afford a simple bag to keep all her clothes in and here we are grumbling about how little we earn every month.
We tend to compare ourselves to other people who are living lavishly, and yet we fail to realise that there are a whole lot of other people out there who can't even afford to buy necessities such as food and clothing.
Wake up and look around you. There much more to life that we realise.

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