Originally published on: November 17th, 2006

You know what’s horrible? When there’s no right way of doing something, so all choices you make have a bad side effect; both choices either right or wrong, but you’d have to look from the opposing point of view to understand why it seems right and it sounds like I’m repeating all my words so I can’t explain it properly so I hope you get it already.

Case study: The old lady who sells vegetables around bandar.

You may or may not know that there is a poor old lady who walks around bandar with a basket full of vegetables. She goes up to the traffic light near CHMS and as soon as the traffic light turns red, she tries to persuade drivers into buying things from her. It’s actually really sad to see the amount of people who turn their heads, roll up their windows, turn up the music and lock their doors when they see her coming. And I wonder what makes them do it. Is it because they don’t want any vegetables? Or they don’t want to give away money? Or they don’t want to be bothered by an old lady?

If you look at it the predictable way, buying some vegetables from this old lady, would let you feel good about yourself, knowing that you did the right thing, and perhaps helped this lady live a little longer. You understand that all she wants is the chance to live, and you’re glad you can do that much, which is why you think those people who shun off the old lady are cold and heartless.

But then again, have you ever bothered to look at things from the opposing point of view? Doing so brings a new kind of understanding and you start to question what you thought was right. See, if you give up a dollar to buy a bunch of vegetables, you’d be building up false hope and impressions for this here lady. You’d make her believe that there are more people like you; people who are willing to purchase some items, when in fact, there may not be.

And seeing as she does her business in the middle of the road, I have to say, it’s not the safest thing to do. She actually ignores all the people she walks by on her way to the traffic light, which implies that all she wants to do is reach this traffic light, but that may be because she walks with her eyes lowered and her paces slow and weak. So, knowing that this way of trade is dangerous and that she cannot keep doing this for her own safety, if you gave her money in exchange for a vegetable of your choice, you’d be making her believe that this is what she’s meant to do; that if she continues to do this, business will come, when actually, it may not.

The thing is, I don’t know of her business anywhere else. The traffic light is the only place I’ve seen her holding up vegetables in front of car windows, in hopes of a few dollars. If you know who I’m talking about and you’ve seen her at places other than the traffic light or walking somewhere ekse, performing her tasks somewhere other than a road, then let me know.

With all that said, when decisions are too hard, and choices don’t come easy, and you just aren’t mature enough to take care of things yourself, there is always the option to just ignore all of this and use other routes to escape having to face the possible complication because, as they say, ignorance is bliss.

What the hell are you supposed to do when your choices are equally balanced out as good and bad; when you know your actions could affect another person’s life? It’s things like this that make life that much more harder to handle.

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