The Reality Check

Richard

The Reality Check

 

Something happened to me on that day in Kolkata, December the 9^th to be exact. I'm not talking about some big, drastic event that happened while I was there that no one would ever expect, in fact, I'm not even sure if it has had an effect at all on the way I go about things now. Nonetheless, something did happen.

It was the day we visited a slum called Brooklyn, which I'm sure the majority of you have probably heard about by now. The day didn't start off well for me after hearing some tough news from back in New Zealand, to be honest, I was actually considering not going out at all that day but after some motivation from the staff I ended up coming along.

Truth to be told, what I saw at Brooklyn has haunted me since, as I touched on in one of my previous blogs I have been too scared to accept what I saw in fear of how I might react. What I felt throughout my time in Brooklyn and ever since is grief, I would describe it as an emotion but I don't believe grief is an emotion. I believe it is better described as more of a parasite that feeds off other emotions in order to 'survive' if you will. Grief will deplete you of happiness, excitement and even sadness at some points. Like any other sickness that it is caused by a parasite, it will hurt as well, it will cause pain. However after reading a poem recently I've seen the pain in a different picture, I'll share with you the line in the poem that I am mainly referring to.

"I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it." -The invitation by Oriah

You see the thing that I have been building up to is that what changed in me after that particular day was that for the first time I was a victim of an immense reality check. A reality check that showed me that point blank, life isn't fair. The people in Brooklyn and numerous other slums in India will potentially live their whole life in, to put it frankly, a hell on earth. This hurt me and still does to this day. I guess one silver lining in this, was that a couple weeks later I learnt how to deal with this pain and an even better thing? I learnt that I was surrounded by young men who wouldn't necessarily take the pain away but would be there to chuck an arm around you or provide a shoulder to lean on when you needed it the most.