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What Really Matters?

As I sit on my bed, writing this, there are, before me at eye level, two photographs. The top photograph shows seven street children standing before a wall. The photograph below it shows another five children, also beggars, taken through a taxi window. Both photos are enlargements and I have had them framed, behind glass, as a reminder of all that I learnt whilst working last year in the slums of Bombay.

The children, in their ragged clothes, have come to symbolise so many of my feelings that, often, merely to look up at them as I studiously work at my desk will bring tears to my eyes. When people visit me and ask me about those photographs it is often the case that I am unable to answer for a while. Sometimes this leads to an embarrassed silence, and for the rest of the day my mood is changed to one of sobriety.

My memories of India are fading rapidly — like the memories of my childhood — but I hope that those feelings will never leave me. In fact, I hope that they will become a part of me which I will carry with me until my dying day.

What really matters? The children in the top-most photograph have nervous smiles, their looks are uneasy, they seem shocked, and afraid. The five beggars below look, in contrast, bright and happy, not because we had given them any money, but because we had asked them their names and, for one precious moment, they may have felt special, or even perhaps, loved.

I do not know what has happened to those children since I left that stinking city. Tonight they will probably be hungry, afraid or maybe not all of them will still be alive.

The two photos speak of several things to me. Firstly how easy it is to bring a smile to someone’s face: to make somebody feel wanted and worthwhile. In India the communal family is so all embracing that loneliness and the fear of being alone is not as great an issue as it is here. Individualism may be a fine thing, but havirig returned from India I found it amazing the number of lonely and uncertain individuals Britain possessed.

Therefore, let us choose to step outside of our inner walls, to admit our own loneness and to help one another to recognise our own worth and the worth of each other.

Secondly, let us ‘seize the day’, to treasure each moment, not for time’s sake, but for the sake of our fellow human beings. Let us admit our mortality and allow that realisation to let every moment of our being and every friendship be savoured to the full.

Lastly, my wish that these feelings, which overwhelm me when I gaze at those distant ragged children, would remain with me forever and would mould my own character can only be true if I keep an open heart. I live in fear of the day that my heart becomes closed and cold, for that would be the day when I had truly ceased to live. Let us keep open, deep and warm hearts, for our capacity to love is as a tiny drop of water being added to a great reservoir, that being the Kingdom of God.

Mark Smith

Last modified: 25th November 2005