The Murderer Who Serves Other People

 One of the more amusing things about writing on a public forum is the fact you will attract attention. Sometimes you get “good” attention. It’s a good ego boost whenever you have people clap for you. However, its inevitably more interesting whenever you p*** people off and they write all sorts of things about you. It’s ultimately the people who you p*** off that give you the most food for thought.

The usual group of fans believe that I am a secret member of the ruling party’s internet brigade subtly trying to influence people to be slaves of the powers that be. Apparently, I am being paid millions. I guess you could say its flattering that people think I have that much influence and power, though I wouldn’t mind a percentage of what they believe I am being paid. I’ve had someone threaten to slap me around with her knockers for being a horrible little man. Unfortunately, she never showed me the said knockers that were going to destroy me.

One of the most interesting comments came as a reaction to my last piece “IT’S EASY TO BE ASAINT IN PARADISE – CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO, COMMANDER DEEP SPACE NINE STAR TREK,” which was picked up by TRemeritus. The topic was abortion and I made it a point to talk about my personal experience with abortion and how I ended up married for the first time because my ex went for the abortion. The accusation is as follows:

 

 Now, I am going to leave the debate on the morality of abortion to more intelligent and wiser people. I will accept that perhaps I am a murderer.

However, what I will question is the why having to work as a waiter was a punishment. What’s particularly interesting is that the punishment comes from “having to serve other people?” I can accept from a purely personal perspective that my punishment for my role in ending the pregnancy was the fact that the two years of marriage were awful. I can see why some people might argue that the fact that I’ve loved other people’s children and looked after them instead of having my own flesh and blood as a form of divine punishment – but serving other people. How is that a punishment?

Let’s start with some basics. I took a job as a waiter in my late thirties because I didn’t have a steady income and more importantly, my CPF savings consisted of less than $4,000 in all accounts. At that point, I was in danger of dying broke in every sense of the word. However, when I got the job and started “serving” other people, I started building up my CPF reserves, which helped pay for the eventual property I was to own and while I probably die broke, I may actually be able to buy an ice cream. So, in the material sense God was punishing me by helping me stabilise my finances.

Working as a waiter did lead to other things. My last big job in media relations came through working at the restaurant where I met members of the Indian Institutes of Management Alumni (IIM) association and I got hired. Then, when I started working in the insolvency business, I ended up meeting lawyers, whom I linked my day job boss to. Again, that was a funny way to punish me by giving me good things.

However, more interestingly, I got to meet the Pinoy and Indian chaps who would become friends. This experience gave me a better understanding of what these guys went through on a daily basis just to make sure that “my people” would have a somewhat comfortable life. Again, if this was a punishment from God, I am incredibly grateful for experience because it helped me to see that “immigrant bashing” populists are in fact the most ungodly people one could get involved with. Sure, my life isn’t great and I’m not racking it in but it’s definitely not the fault of the Indian chaps working in the kitchen.

If you look at just about every book on “success” you’ll find that having a mentality that you need to “serve other people” is one of the key elements. Say what you like about “Big Tech” but it’s been built on “serving.” Google for example, made life that much easier by serving us in our efforts to get information on the net. Every business is about “serving” other people in order to make a profit. If your business doesn’t serve anyone, who is going to pay for it.

Then, it occurred to me that since I’ve been dubbed a murder who had to serve other people as a punishment, shouldn’t that be the basis of criminal justice. Right now, its all about hanging and jailing. Now, I do agree that there are some elements of society that are unreformable and when you’re nice to them they’ll only take it as a weakness. However, for the most part, isn’t it better to reform people than to destroy them – especially in a society that is rapidly aging and claims that in needs to maximise what little manpower resources it has?

I think of the movie Gandhi when a murder tells Gandhi he going to hell because he bashed the skull of a Muslim boy in retaliation for Muslims killing his family. Gandhi says, the way out of hell is to find an orphan and raise him as his own – but he must raise him as a Muslim. If you think about it, that’s surprisingly practical advice.

So, as a murderer who is being punished by being made to serve other people, I will announce that I’m very happy that the divine has given me such a punishment. Thank God for being made to serve other people.