There’s this violent desire within me to talk of things personal today, but I am prudent enough, for the moment, not to fall to that. I do not entirely feel good about this resistance, but then again, I am not supposed to.

Perhaps one of the most used currencies in our everyday lives is health. It is often underestimated, while we enjoy it, and craved once we lose it. I find it appealing to muse over the usage of my own words : “while we enjoy it”. If we enjoy it, then we ought to feel it, appreciate it, live it. But we don’t. Not the grand majority.

I remember volunteering to spend quality time with children plagued with cancer. It was surreal to listen to them and to watch them play; their skins yellow-green and their little heads naked of hair. And then, just as we were playing, the nurse would come to take one child away for a “session”.

When I first arrived to the centre, there were people clustered around the main portal. Men and women. Then a black van came and the men hugged the now-crying women. I remember how sad I felt for them although I did not really know them or their misery. But that’s the miracle of being human, our sorrows and joys are common and don’t need much elaboration.

Some three hours later I was walking through the corridors of the centre, then passing through the same portal and by the ghosts of those men and women. All the people in the outside world looked so different in such a sudden manner. I stared at their faces and I stared at their hair. Having someone walk in front of me so slowly did not bother me anymore, being pushed out of the way by someone in a hurry seemed so trivial. Even my lectures and my whole personal universe were nothing. Nothing at all.

There are other worlds within our world, which seems so limited and yet is endless. Hospitals and clinics are one, they remind you that there are people who battle suffering while you complain about, what, trifles.

Happy mother’s day, mama.