God bless you...

'God bless you'... This was what I got when I shared something with someone not too long ago. '

Oh, you are angel sent to help me,' was another one which came my way on another occasion. The latter made me felt a little squirmish, of course, because I know I am definitely no angel.

Yet I have learned too that the same people who blessed me when I did my little part in reducing whatever load that they were facing were even quicker to 'curse' me too. One went on a tirade of lecturing me about road manners in what was an honest mistake on my part.... and this 'angel' has since then steered clear of that character. Another went running like a kid rushing to his parent(s) to solve his problem because completing a negotiation regarding a professional matter became too much even as an act of consideration, let alone kindness for a little inconvenience is too much to shoulder. The parent here refers to the boss or one of the 'bosses'. So, I mused the GBU in my email...... because it tells me too how little we actually value our own words or the people those words are directed at. But I guess I am no exception too, I supposed since, I too belong to this selfish, inconsiderate species called human beings and also contribute to this problem.

Talk is cheap, I realized... We bless and we curse in the same breath. We preach but we don't follow what we preach. It's usually in times of dire straits or needs, do gratitude, humility usually creep in. Else, Freud was right.

I teach history. In one of my lessons, we discussed about the Spaniards in the Phillipines. Gold, Glory and Gospel.... The colonialists felt that the savages of the east needed God and they came preaching the gospel. And so we are told that the gospel preaches that God is love, that we are all his children, etc, etc.... And so the savages embraced the gospel freely..... only to discover to their horror that the God preached to them and the God of their colonial masters seemed to be different.... God is love.... The natives were forced into labour and they had to pay high taxes. And when the natives asked that they be made a territory of Spain, their colonial masters balked.... So much for God is love.... or God is a just god.... Semantics, rhetorics...uh, the list never ends... As and when it suits us. God certainly wasn't the main reason for their coming....

And so back to the characters who blessed and then cursed me... Sometimes life throws such kinds of characters into our lives for a reason. I was cheesed off for sure but I have also since realised that they will not be the first nor the last and that I, too should be mindful of my own actions. I wonder too whether such people can ever understand or truly appreciate what it really means to be gracious.... An ongoing lesson which I am still grappling with myself....