The grass always seems greener on the other side, but is it really? My name is Kawaljot, a year 2 student at HKU and this is my sharing.
Growing up, my parents always emphasized on being humble and helping those in need. A very common thing to teach your child, I mean who wouldn’t? But you see, there's a wide deep gap between hearing these teachings and actually understanding their meaning to apply in life. And sometimes not everyone manages to get to the other side of this “huge deep gap”. And so at a very young age, my parents started to encourage me to do community work. As a kid, I would go sell flags with mom to collect donations for SPCA or elderly homes in Hong Kong. In primary school, I even joined a Community Youth Program, initially with the aim to collect the highest number of points in order to win awards. But throughout this process of chasing points to win awards, I met some amazing people with beautiful stories and learnt valuable life lessons which gave me chances to have some fruitful experiences.
Soon before I knew it, I had overcome and crossed that “huge deep gap”. Last year I went on a service trip to Nepal, we lived on the mountains and got to witness an amazing view each day, we would make comments about how we wished we lived here instead of going back to Hong Kong. But in reality, the only reason we felt that way was because we were there for barely 3 weeks. If we actually had to live there, with no WiFi, no proper transportation to commute from place to place, no washing machines, no access to food that we ever so often crave at times, would we still have been making those comments? I don’t think so.
A lot of the children who lived in that village had lost everything in the earthquake that happened a few years back, but for these kids, even the raw peaches in the summer brought them so much joy that all they wanted to do was share this token of happiness with us while we were there. This experience had me reflecting on life in Hong Kong. Many of us receive education, have a roof over our head, and great food to eat every day but sometimes we take this privilege for granted.
As an EM in Hong Kong, I have strived hard to achieve as much as I can in terms of education or community services. Despite having been labelled as “minority”, I still believe that this city belongs to me just as much as it does to anyone else out there and I too want to give back in return for everything this beautiful city has given me. When I think about the kids in Nepal who dream of having what we are so conveniently given, it makes me realize how naive we are sometimes to not take notice of and appreciate what is before our eyes. And when given more than enough, I think it becomes our responsibility to contribute back to those in need and help in our capacity. The grass is not always greener on the other side but what we can do is appreciate what we have and give to those who don’t.
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