Beggars on the Streets (Narrative Essay)

I see them on streets most of the time. They’re lucky if someone gives them a pennyor two with which they could buy something to eat – No, just to fill their stomachs. Because to eat is when you enjoy what you’re really consuming and getting nourishment from it. That they don’t really experience as they chew on things that you could barely consider food. A pack of 5-peso chips to feed 5 dying children of hunger isn’t really eating, right?

And if nobody gives them alms, they have free meals. Like stray dogs, they pick on the garbage and search for something still edible. Of course they couldn’t get enough nutrition from that, so they’re always lethargic, almost half dead on the roads. And in their filthy, shabby form, they sleep on sidewalk, ignoring the danger of the city road plus the unfriendly changes of weather.

So I guess I’m really not in the place to say that life sucks when these people in our society still exist. With all these stresses that I am dealing with, I should still consider myself lucky to have been able to live life to a form that I may still be considered human. The burdens of my everyday life, as compared to theirs, are nothing but a sphere of bubble. Theirs is far too great. The world is really on their shoulders. Their lives are living hell on earth. While I have access to everywhere I may wish to go to, they don’t. They are mainstays of the fierce road and they won’t and they can’t go somewhere else but there. Their home is also their cages.

I couldn’t help but admit how foolish I am to just take for granted some things that for me seemed just an apple on my hand, while for others, a coconut on that very tall tree. Seeing life through this perspective, I can’t be thankful enough that through all this daily struggling with life, some people have it way worse – like these beggars. I pray that as I may change the way I view about life, the world would also change the way they treat others who are less fortunate. May we all realize that it takes more than a couple of coins to change lives. I wish we’d all have fair access to everything in life a normal human has. That instead of fearing them, we might give them smiles instead and offer a hand to help them out. Beggars or not, we’re all humans by the way.