日々のできごと

What do you think of true kindness?

Sakura Kawakami

  I saw the man.  He was sitting in the middle of the crowd with his face down, his hands holding out for some money.  I could see two small coins in his hands.
 It was when I was in elementary school.  I went to Seoul, Korea with my family and my grandmother.  We were going downstairs at the subway station.  The station was very crowded.  And there my eyes caught the man sitting ahead of me, in the middle of the stairs.  He sat still. I also stood there still when I noticed that he was begging for money.  People around me didn’t pay any attention to him.  Some looked at him with eyes full of hatred.  I felt they were very cold.  I could not move.  I just stood there still.  
 “Let’s go, Sakura,” said my grandmother and pulled my hand.  I followed her but I was grabbing the wallet in my bag.  The image of the poor man kept on going around in my mind.  He was around my father’s age, I guessed, although I could not see his face clearly.  This was my first time to see a person begging for money.  I was born and raised in the suburbs of Tokyo.  This scene was not familiar to me.  It was so shocking to me, and I also felt angry at myself. Why didn’t I give some money to him? I did have some money to give him. But I didn’t try to help him, like the grown-ups who looked so cold ignoring him as if he were not there.  I hated myself. 
 But what I saw next, following my family, was even worse.  There were so many men holding their hands out, begging for money.  It was a terrible sight, but somehow I felt relieved. I didn’t have enough money to give all these poor people anyway.  So it was all right, I thought.  But was it really all right?  That night I started to regret.  I was confused, and began to make many excuses.  And I felt uncomfortable with myself.
 Shortly after I came back to Japan, I read an essay written by one of my best friends.  She wrote about her experience of seeing a man begging money for the bus-ride. “Even if somebody might give him the ticket today, how could he go on living afterwards?”  Her question really struck me.  It reminded me of the poor man I saw in Seoul.  If I had given him acoin, it could have been some relief for him for the moment.  But I do not think it is true kindness.  I think true kindness is to think about people’s future, consider what they really need, and then make an a ction for them.
 Now I am in junior high school.  I want to work for people who need help.  I will study hard and learn a lot about history and social systems.  I hope to become a person who is kind too thers in a true sense.  I’ll be glad if my speech will be an opportunity for everyone to think about others together.  Thank you.