Rising beyond the ordinary to make a difference

Apr 10, 2014

By Anil Netto
Sometimes we tend to feel that it is difficult to rise above the humdrum ordinariness of our lives. In the larger scheme of things, we may feel powerless to effect change. After all, we are just cogs in the machine, just bit players in a relentless, sometimes ruthless and rapacious system.

How many of us feel we are too unworthy to emulate the saints or too fearful to rise to the stature of great souls in history like Gandhi and Mandela.

Unfortunately, because of our perceived unworthiness or aversion to risk-taking, many of us do not step out of our comfort zones to make a difference in the lives of our neighbours in need. We might even mock others who are stepping out into the great unknown.

In recent days, we have mourned the loss of Irene Fernandez and the blogger-activist Bernard Khoo @ Zorro Unmasked. At various points in their lives, they took a stand to speak out for the rights of the marginalised and the oppressed.

In Irene’s case, she championed the cause of migrant workers’ rights, among other causes, going on to found the organisation Tenaganita.

For former La Salle teacher Bernard Khoo, it was about a calling to promote the cause of political and democratic reforms.

Through his writings, he urged us to think of ourselves as people on a shared journey in a land often divided by ethnicity and religion, speaking out at great personal risk. His dream of seeing a new Malaysia may not have been realised in his lifetime, but the seed has fallen to the ground, and new shoots will sprout.

I suspect neither Irene nor Bernard considered themselves to be particularly saintly. They may have had their idiosyncrasies, their imperfections, their shortcomings. But that did not stop them from speaking out strongly for what they believed. The causes they espoused were vital in promoting the common good, in breaking down the barriers of prejudice that divide us human beings.

In their journey of life, they must have somehow absorbed and internalised, perhaps from their Christian heritage, the ideals of pursuing the cause of the downtrodden and providing liberty to captives (of mind, body or spirit). Their lives show us that any one of us can rise beyond the ordinary and soar on the wings of eagles.

A quote often attributed to Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day is, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”

She would explain: “When they call you a saint,” she said, “it means basically that you are not to be taken seriously.” Maybe there's some truth in that. We tend to look at saints as superhumans soaring to heights we could never reach, when they are actually people like us struggling on life’s journey.

So we don’t dare rise above the ordinary because we feel that we are not “good” enough to emulate the saints or heroic enough to push the boundaries. Instead, we feel more comfortable putting our saints and heroes on a pedestal, to be admired but not emulated – simply because we consider ourselves unworthy or are afraid of the personal risk involved.

But Dorothy Day also said: “We are all called to be saints... We might as well get over our bourgeois fear of the name. We might also get used to recognising the fact that there is some of the saint in all of us. Inasmuch as we are growing, putting off the old man and putting on Christ, there is some of the saint, the holy, the divine right there.”

People like Irene Fernandez and Bernard Khoo show us that we don’t have to be ‘saints’ in the traditional sense to make a difference in the lives of others and in larger society. They nurtured the spark within them and lived what they believed.

Mother Teresa once said, “As I often say to people who tell me they would like to serve the poor as I do, ‘What I can do, you cannot. What you can do, I cannot. But together we can do something beautiful for God.’”

Are we doing anything beautiful of note? Let us take up the baton passed on to us and pursue, in our own way, the cause of the dispossessed, the marginalised and the downtrodden so that they too can take their rightful place in the great banquet of life to which we have all been invited.