A World of Pain and Trouble
Published: 18 December 2012 By Abiodun Giwa
Hurricane Sandy swept through the Tri-States of New York, New Jersey and
Connecticut, and left miseries on its path. A helpless mother's two children swept away,
among other unquantifiable losses.
A building collapsed in Ghana trapping innocent souls, some killed and others rushed
to the hospital, uncertain of their fate. Before Sandy, a nanny whose job was to care for
children left in her care put a knife against their souls and butchered them.
The world has heard of a madman who accosted a child coming from school, led him
to his own home, butchered him and kept his decapitated remain in the refrigerator.
Thus when a boy of 20 took his own mother's guns, shot his own mother, got into her
car,drove to a school, and shot 20 children and 6 adults before taking his own life, it
was turning an already bad case into worse scenario. And in between you heard about
a woman who took her child to hospital and got hit with a bullet when she ventured out
of the hospital walls. Before that you heard of a guy who came to New York from
California and shot in the back of the head, execution style in day light. There are worse
scenarios happening everyday around the world that we don't hear about. It is a world
of pain and trouble, people have summed up.
"Why do these things happen?" a man the reporter met for the first time at an LIRR
Station in Jamaica in the United States, asked. "My daughter got married two
weeks ago and the man he married just died, two weeks after their marriage. When
my daughter is in pain, I am also in pain. Does God exist; does He sees these
things?"
To comfort him, the reporter told him about his own experience about loss, its misery,as
a part of humanity that we learn its ruthlessness as we grow up.But to some observers
interviewed for this story, it is like God has abandoned humans to their fate.
"When humans agreed and spoke the same language, God scattered their language
because he was unhappy with them, and thought they might be coming to challenge his
authority like his adverasry driven from heaven." a young man said, evoking John Milton's
Paradise Lost.
Wasn't why Sophocles wrote in Oedipus Rex that let every man in mankind's frailty
consider his last day; and let none presume on his good fortune until he finds life, at his
death, a memory without pain?