“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.” - Mother Teresa: A Simple Path
How true, and how sad and where Mother Teresa talks about spirituality, it is lacking in the world. But all it would take is a change in perception, to think about others, how we can help the less fortunate. How we can give back.
The world has chasms
Where the world is divided, now we are seeing huge chasms open, in all aspects of societies; we have all been taken out of our comfort zones, but we need to find our way back. And with lifting restrictions, many hundreds of thousands of people who are high risk, and vulnerable have been left, stuck in their homes. They are uncared for in our communities.
The Pandemic
The media have talked about us being opinionated and disapproving, also divided on many aspects of the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands are now stuck in their home. My home is my confinement. In the pandemic where we should be working together, in our everyday, many of us have also become invisible and distant.
Mother Teresa and Princess Diana's legacy
But it is something we should be thinking about and changing. The more enlightened and less earthly we are, the more love we have to give, the more we can change lives. Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, throughout their lives always strived to give back, to help those less advantaged, even though they both dealt with mental and emotional trauma.
We may not all be a Mother Teresa or a Princess Diana, but life is about giving back, it's why we're here. When you take the ego out, you can see that. It's small steps, and we have to want to change.
An Act of 'service' and 'love'
In the early months of the pandemic we saw doctors and nurses coming together to save lives, in many cases, many lost their own. Another act of service and an act of love. Now for the world's survival, we need to give some of that love back.
