I love Vincent
"What did I learn? That when you come unstuck, when you have lost every shred of personal capacity, every support system, then without the help of the community - once strangers and now friends - you lose your essential humanity. And those of us who might otherwise look the other way, would lose our right to be human because, I learnt, to look the other way, to ignore suffering, to prioritise my own needs and forget about others', would make me lose the fundamental criterion of humanity, which is to feel with others.
"Only when you have looked, in the face, at the suffering and brokenness of your neighbours, your friends, do you suddenly know that to ignore them is to live half a life; that all the wealth in the world cannot entirely erase the nagging reminder that there are others who have not prospered." (195)
"Had we run so fast towards our goal that we had forgotten why we were running? Had we not run from poverty of the body only to collide uncompromisingly with a poverty of the spirit?" (197)
Vincent Wijeysingha. 2011. Beyond Social Work But Not Apart, in J.S Tan (ed.) A Nation Awakes: Frontline Reflections, 194-199.
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