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The Girl in Pink

Once, while walking through the great city of Mumbai, India, I saw this girl waiting at a bus stop.

My attention was drawn to the contrast between the girl and her surroundings, or more exactly: to the contrast between the dirty bus stop and the beautiful pink dress worn by the girl.

The pink dress is nice, but there’s nothing exceptional about it. The dirt around it reveals it, and brings out its beauty. The grey all around highlights the pink, in the same way that a light from a lit candle will be seen in darkness.

The same candle would not be seen in the light of a noon summer sun. Nobody would really notice it.

It makes me think of the actual state of our world. You won’t be surprised if I say that the tremendous progress humanity has made over the last centuries in the scientific and technical fields has been negatively balanced by a loss of human values. Empathy, generosity and compassion, to name only a few, seem to have vanished from our daily environment.

The so-called “world leaders” are most responsible for this situation, as they continuously show through their personal example, and without any shame, that these values are totally foreign to them. Most of them should not be considered leaders at all, because how can a person who constantly demonstrates a lack of basic human qualities could be qualified to lead humanity towards a better future?

It is becoming more and more obvious that we have entered a new dark period of history. We shall overcome, since history is cyclical, and this is just another period of “middle ages” in the history of humanity. It is not the first, and I believe it won’t be the last.

Does this mean that all we can do is just wait patiently for the cycle to end? It could take quite a long time…. the last “Middle-Ages” in Europe lasted around 1000 years! So what can we do?

I believe we can’t restore human values by non-ethical means: darkness is fought with light, not with darkness. Death and ignorance are defeated by life and education. Unconsciousness is eradicated by consciousness.

So can we really do something? It seems we are too small to face such a huge challenge, like Perseus facing Medusa, like Heracles in the face of his 12 tasks, like Theseus entering the labyrinth to face and kill the Minotaur.

But it is in our smallness that our strength lies. Just like a single candle can make much more difference when in darkness then when surrounded by light, our voice, our actions, our ethics and our human values will be seen and can make a difference for each one of the people around us, who are walking in the darkness, searching for a light.