We All Bleed the Same

 

I will be using a story of a little girl who is around 11 years to drive the point of this piece home – we all bleed the same. (I know you can relate with this story).

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rainstorming over some life issues with my very good friend two nights ago, she shared a heartbreaking yet common story with me that pushed me into thinking about what makes humans truly human. The story is heartbreaking because it elicits sympathy due to man’s inhumanity to man, yet common because we hear such daily.

In this part of the world, we all are acquainted with the common practice of rich people bringing some poor girl or boy from the village to help out with house chores and run errands. A stipend would be paid to the girl or the boy, or maybe the person would be trained in school as a remuneration for his or her services. To the parents of such a person, it could be a major relieve, because they may be struggling to make both ends meet. So the fact that their boy or girl is taken to the city means they have one less mouth to feed. True, from the purest of intentions, gestures like this are commendable. However, in most cases, how those girls or boys are treated afterwards beckons on deep consideration as to whether we all are human.

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o back to what my friend shared with me. Her mother was on her way home last week and observed that a girl who was brought from the village by a certain family in their area to help with house chores and provision store was sitting dejected with sore eyes and swollen face in a tight corner. Driven by curiosity, her Mother asked the little girl what was wrong. At first, the girl said nothing, but after a bit of pressing, the girl opened up in tears and said her mistress beat her for losing the phone bought for her while she was attending to customers at the provision store. (I strongly believe that no amount of beating can bring the missing phone back).

The story of this little girl of around 11 years is just a representative of many similar cases. I know you can relate to stories as this as well. Thinking about this, I asked myself questions, questions that beckon for answers that if truly and sincerely given can cause a revolution in how we handle and treat each other. If we are created in God’s image, why do we sometimes treat each other as if the other person is an animal? If we are blessed with rational thinking and heart for compassion, what has happened to us that we sometimes lose it especially in times and situations that we are set in a place of authority over others? What will happen if we go on this way instead of treating others with love, and kindness?  Our world is broken and lives are hurting daily, the least you can do is to treat another with some ounce of kindness.

I have seen how superiors handle their inferiors thoughtlessly, and how masters or bosses treat those under them rudely and how those placed in the position of authority relate with their subordinates without human respect. Some even have the erroneous theory that respect and devotion are driven by fear. Hence, in all their dealings, they work towards instilling fear in those under them. I can’t but ask, what has happened to us as humans? Where is our humanness? Have we lost touch with kindness, love and compassion? Take a quick observatory look on how things are going in our world, you will realise that people often treat others as if we are not the same, as if it is not the same blood flowing in our veins, as if we will not all die someday.

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his piece may not be all-encompassing in capturing and covering the issues relating to the topic under discourse because they are just many. This goes further to show how deep the decay of humanity is, and how desperate humanity needs God. You see, the truth is, kings or slaves, queens or maidens, the haves and the haves not, the educated or the illiterate, the rulers and the ruled; no matter what category you have been classified under in life, we all bleed the same. Regardless of all the categorizations and classifications, we have in society, they don’t take away from us the reality that we are all humans and we bleed the same. There is no amount of ill-treatment that you can give another that can in any way make you more of a human or make the person less of a human than you. The earlier we know and live with this reality, the better our world becomes.

Are you a master who has boys and girls under you? How fair are you treating them, are you a boss at work? Do your subordinates fear you out of love or because of how inhuman you treat them? This world doesn’t need a thousand angels to make things right, all we need is you and me treating each other with love. To value people more than things, to invest in humanity before things. If there is ever going to be a quick fix to the brokenness of our world, it must be in the garage of love, carried out by a mechanic filled with kindness and compassion.

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mpathically, our world is broken and lives are hurting.  We are mortals but carry the image of God in us. Hence we have all it takes to affect and change our world.  We are to clothe ourselves with love, kindness and compassion. We should treat others like they matter because they truly matter. It was Philip Yancey who said: "what makes us human is not our mind but our heart, not our ability to think but our ability to love". If there is any time for us to be truly mortals clothed with immortality it is now. The only way for us to achieve this is to ask God to help us see and treat others as he should and to constantly know that, we all bleed the same.

Thank you for reading

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