From: gyit_tu
EMail: bookwormz_99@yahoo.com
4/2/01 8:21 am
The other day, I watched an Australian program called “Survivor”. The show is about few people (I think it’s 14) being left on an island and each “unpopular” person is voted off the island till the last remaining person becomes the winner. I smiled at the thought that we do not need to be stranded on an island to become a survivor. In fact, we are survivors in our own ways on each day of our life.
Every day, we have to learn how to survive in the “sardine-packed” train on our way to and from work. No matter how skinny a person is, it will always be hard to get a space without being squeezed by other people. Over the years of traveling in such trains, I have also perfected the skill of balancing myself without any hold. Somehow, I have managed to apply the rules of gravity I learnt in school.
It makes matters worse that there is always incessant ringing of mobile phones and pagers amidst the crowd in the train. There are also people who blast their mp3/CD players despite the risk of becoming deaf. I do not mind if the music is anything except heavy metal. However, almost all those people happen to be heavy metal music fans. The sound spilled into the whole train and throughout my 30-minute train ride, my ears have to endure such “ordeal”. I have tried everything from looking at people’s shoes to trying to meditate. Finally, the best I could think of is just to close my eyes and not to think about anything at all. That 1 hour each day becomes my solitude from our ever-stressful lifestyle.
Just one of those days, I realized that a lot of people in this world are great actors. They pretend to be interested in the conversation out of politeness, put on a smiling face and say courtesy words out of pretence, complement each other while they are fuming with jealousy inside and so on. Over the years, for more than once, I was one of those actors too. You can probably call it as human nature or survival skill. Frankly, it is the toughest skill I have to attain in this life.
You see, we do not have to enter “survivor” show to become one. We are survivors in our own ways.