Justice
Envision a lone boy lying down on a dirty bed. His eyes are nearly popping
out from their sockets. His mouth is infested with a dozen alien insects hoping to steal
away the meager nourishment he receives. The young one’s whole frame is paper-thin
skin with the bones visibly projecting outwards. Infected with various diseases, he slowly
awaits the peace of death. These illnesses, now curable by science, ravage the
child’s puny physique. He has nothing to hope for. In fact, the boy has never dreamed
or hoped throughout the short expanse of his life. Capture this picture and multiply it a
million times over. What you get is the kaleidoscope of poverty that haunts every
populated continent on earth. It is the mural of half our society.
Yet, there is a faint glimmer of hope. It is deliverance of justice into
the hands of the poor. However, it does not refer to the upholding of the law. This
context of justice can never happen for we are the culprits ourselves. We are wholly
responsible for the catastrophe that has
 beset our
world’s poor. As compensation for our grievous crime, we should afford them the true
justice that the poor desire and need.
This justice is a process and like all processes it takes time and energy.
However, this is a task we all must undertake with wholeheartedness and joy. The process
begins with realizing that there are millions of people suffering throughout the world. It
is also essential that we recognize why they are in anguish and what caused such distress
among a large number of peoples. Yes, media may feature pictures of poverty almost
everyday but media limits us to view the better-looking ones. What is not being shown
denies us the knowledge of the true gravity of the situation being faced by almost all
poor people most specially in Third World countries. We must go beyond the parameters of
media and discover for ourselves what is truly happening out in the world.
The second step
is to treat the poor with true equality. As people who have more in life, we have always
pitied those below us, the poor most specially. Yet this should not be so. Pitying them is
like treating the poor like mere animals. This is because we are maintaining a certain
aloofness; a superiority over the destitute. An act done out of pity does not involve
love, there is an essence of detachedness. Instead of feeling sorry for the poor, we must
be compassionate with them. We should learn how to feel with and for them.
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