The simple heart

In 1991 a census was taken on “Population and Housing”. It was found that the urban population was at 62% nationwide . It is now 2008, 17 years later. Today, Malaysia ranks 34^th in the list of countries based on GDP (Gross Domestic Product), suggesting an average financial standing and economic size. We have a commendable economy, but statistics aside, the trend of modernization is catching on….

Half a century ago, our forefathers toiled in labor to bring the people out the jungles into the cities. Immigrants, traveling with the clothes on their backs were pioneers of a sacrificing generation; one that left their homes to give comfort to their future offspring. This was the typical vision for the generation then: the legacy of a better economic and financial state for the future generations. With every generation that has passed, most of us have now stepped closer to the ‘city’, if we haven’t already entered. Success stories are being written of rural boys working to the top in the capital city, aboriginals obtaining scholarships, students setting records of A’s achieved in national exams, the rich becoming richer, the good becoming the best. But something is missing.

We ARE becoming better. But only in a certain way that the world holds. There is a problem with moving up- we forget there is essentially no ‘up’.

Perhaps this is why the hegemony of power will always be controlled by an elite group; call it what you want: politicians, bishops, kings, tycoons, overstaying MIC leaders. This thirst for greatness ironically puts us further away from it; for in every class in society, the chase for it has made men leave many things behind.

Among these things is the simple heart.

In the midst of all the seriousness of life or situations we ‘wake up’ to or grow to discover, there is always a voice that wakes me up in the morning; one which sings in an off-key set of notes; but never fails to remind me that for all that this life could ever offer, there’s nothing quite like simplicity. At times, this voice would be accompanied with a three-stringed worn-out guitar, strummed out of rhythm with a broken melody.

As I learn more about a complex world in the newspapers, I am reminded of a simple soul who lives under the same roof as I do; who at the sound of the auto-gate opening, rushes to the windows where she waves to her father returning from work with a broad smile on her face. Oblivious to the complexities of the world and the ambitions many of the people of her age would be growing up with should she be normal, her life is pure and speaks a message of its own, unlike the superficial lives everywhere. I wonder whether she is in fact abnormal, or just really, the rest of the world.

It is at these times that I look at her and I know that she’s a living reminder that God made us all simple at heart, and more do I understand the truth that the ‘least’ become the greatest in His kingdom. There are more deserving lives to be mentioned in my writings (one as hers) and more around us to emulate, apart from great men who started wars they died in, and big names that people forget when other big names replace them. There are more ways to ‘be better’. There is another race for ‘greatness’ which takes a reverse route that we wouldn’t commonly take, in which the contestants almost seem to run the wrong way, as the participants of the world would see.

Am I anti-progress, to say we must shun great plans for ourselves and stop looking for the best in the world? No. Progress will find us with time. The best of the world is in the simplest of places, and the greatest ‘plans’ are ones made without a ‘my’ in front. In all that we awaken to, from the political, economic, academic- we must never abandon a simple heart; one that statistics will never record, but lives remember.