By Wang JC
When we were young, we drew national flags during national day celebration. I had vivid memories. I always make sure i draw a nice rectangle shape. Try to colour the red properly and took time to not colour red over the white stars and crescent. Interestingly, as a young boy, i felt a sense of responsibility as a citizen to make sure i draw our flag neatly and correctly. I took pride and had a sense of belonging with this country.
Our young minds were pure and genuinely patriotic and we learned to appreciate and love this country.
There was always hope in our naive mind that we grow together with our country. The country prosper and so does the citizens. And everyone lived happily ever after…
Sadly, that is not really the case for some. Why do i not feel the passion anymore? The patriotism had died off from me. The pride of being a citizen no longer exist within my blood. There is no happiness being associated with my country. There is nothing to anticipate and look forward to. The future looks really dark for younger generations And all hope seems lost.
Of course we can argue that changes and new rules are inevitable and we should work together as citizen to fulfill the government’s objective and make the country prosper. But honestly.. Whats its for us? What do we get in return? We can only get a “place”(Not home) that is harder to live in.
So do we work to make our country a happier place to live in and grow our community bond or do we just blindly strive for economic excellence in a country.
Are we happy? Why the use of the GDP as a benchmark for our country’s success? Why don’t we simply use the number of smiles on the faces of passengers in MRT trains as a gauge for a country’s success? How can we make people smile on trains instead of making their usual complains. What is important honestly? The country itself or the people that makes up a country. What’s the point of having a financially rich economy when the people are not happy?
Through social media network platforms, all we see are people complaining everyday. (Trains, immigrants, cost of living) etc. People are filled with so much anger these days. We even complain over the most trivial issues ( hdb weddings, taxi drivers etc) What has become of us? Where is the compassion and tolerance?
As the country plans for their next step ahead, we are left to wonder what will happen to us? Their selfish plans has made us less tolerable on our society and other people and we became a seemingly selfish and sad bunch of people. We are forcefully driven to excel and survive in this country and that is when we lost our compassion and focus on wrong issues.
I guess that’s their idea of a country’s success.
