Our most important teacher

Last Saturday, the world celebrated Teachers Day. Such a day is not as highly commercialised as Christmas, Valentine’s or the more famous celebration in May, Mother’s Day, but it is still a day of appreciation for teachers.

Typically, there will be wishes of “Happy Teachers Day”, small gifts or heart-warming gestures to those who are teachers and educators at all levels of the academic hierarchy.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder if we missed out on celebrating the most important teacher of all – life itself.

Last week alone, my lesson was on how nonchalant and uncaring my classroom can be. Living in the big city of Kuala Lumpur, I am used to operating alone and to some extent, even made peace with singlehood.

Reading a friend’s Facebook status, which has since became viral on social media, on how a blatant public display of abuse received the “sweep-under-the-carpet” treatment by society, served as the first big lesson of the week.

While what Beatrice Leong did by speaking up was an act of chivalry, the argument lies in the victim mentality of the victims themselves.

Oppressors and abusers are who they are because we allow them to be. We must realise that nobody else will live our lives or fight our battles for us. I wish that young wife had raised her hand in defence, if only to find the first step towards empowering herself to one day walk away from an abusive relationship.

No one deserves to be humiliated or physically whacked for showing emotions, or for simply being a woman. I have spoken about my own act of helping a victim of abuse in this column a few weeks back and somehow, I still find it hard to understand why is it so tough for people to stand up to injustice.

That society prefers to condemn the helpers instead of helping the victims.

I have to say, I am proud to know Bea, in addition to all the other activism work that she does, her simple gesture that day was simply heroic.

Our society has somehow misplaced compassion, where even a convicted paedophile is seen as a genius and a rapist is considered a victim of lies and deceit.

Where a 14-year-old girl who fell pregnant through a sperm-smeared finger is called a liar, while the rapist (any sexual relations with minors below 16 years of age is statutory rape) gleefully goes scot-free. Did anyone consider her future? Or the future of the child beget through rape?

I digress. The other big lesson from last week was how most of us have lost our humanity. As a molecular virologist, I really wish that I could share my appreciation of how beautiful and intricate genomes are with everyone.

If one looks closely enough, one can understand that we are all one and the same. Perhaps I am getting too philosophical, but the fact is our human genomes have almost 99.5% similarity with each other, and our individual beliefs, ethnicity, physical looks – all the things that make us diverse – only lies with 0.5% of our genetic material.

With that in mind, one wonders why some of us are so adamant about focusing only on our differences and not our similarities.

We are selfish and prejudicial towards others and seem to not be able to find the kindness and compassion in ourselves to help fellow human beings in need. Reading through the discourse in helping the Rohingyas and the Bangladeshis, I cannot fathom it.

Do we even need to overthink to help nowadays?

All those people on those boats are human beings, someone’s mother, sister, brother, daughter, son. All of us have potential as human beings, all of us when we are aware of life, have hopes and dreams.

Life deals us cards and we play the game of thrones. The only difference to the TV series is we all die at the end. Some of us are more fortunate – with the freedom to live, to practise our religions, to express ourselves the way we want to, and to have the basic necessities of human life. Most of us are blessed to have these in abundance.

If one day, God forbid, some of us find ourselves having to leave this fair country for fear of our lives and liberty, would there be enough humanity in the world to lend a helping hand?

How would we fair if we are unwanted, alone yet cramped up with so many other zombified bodies, our dreams and hopes and liberties taken from us?

Think of all the time we face rejections in our lives. Imagine if that rejection happens to be for our basic human rights to live, to learn, to love, to be.

By doing nothing, or facing away from any problems because it does not concern us, we have instead turned ourselves into tyrants. And I quote Dumbledore, “Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realise that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one that rises against them and strikes back!"

There is nothing emotional about helping another human being, instead, it is compassion.

It is human.

Happy belated Teachers Day, life. – May 20, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.