Our Role on Earth

By Saad Ali Baloch, Education Youth Ambassador

The Earth is an enormous place where diversity prevails. Amongst the many communities and populations exists love, hate, kindness, jealousy and so many characteristics that makes us human. Being human is not merely classified through physical features like a pair of eyes, ears a nose and so forth, I believe being “human” is to use our brains to think for the benefit of others, feeling the agony of others and raising our voices against injustice. In short, practicing, safeguarding and promoting humanity is what it takes to acquire the status of being a “human”.

 

This may sound like an emotionally exaggerated definition, but to me, this is the absolute truth.

 

After my final exams, I was keen to volunteer for community service somewhere. Community service is immensely valued in developed and educated countries but ignored in others. Unfortunately, Pakistan falls in the latter category. Nevertheless, I took part in different  community service projects like donating books to needy students, donating charities to various organizations and road cleaning projects e.g. Islamabad Motorway cleanup project 2011. Even after these, I wanted to contribute more towards the society. Therefore I volunteered for a week to teach street children at a special organization in my city. This school provided a platform to people to volunteer for teaching so can teach and simultaneously learn many things from underprivileged children.

 

It only takes a moment of time and everything can change – through teaching in this school, this is exactly what happened to me. The purpose of my life completely changed in a few moments when realized how a simple smile on a random child’s face can mean so much to me. I was supposed to teach them the prescribed syllabus, but during the process of doing so, my students unintentionally enlightened me about life and its reality, its purpose and how to smile when life is harsh on you, how to remain steadfast in extreme situations and how to find happiness in little things. When I asked them about their aspirations, they left me absolutely stunned with their replies. Each of them had different ideas, like doctor, pilot, engineer, president of the country; but one thing that they all had in common was to serve humanity. The future doctors wanted to set up clinics in remote areas free of cost, the engineers wanted to earn and set up an organization for underprivileged children, the future president wanted to eradicate hunger and poverty altogether!

 

These professions were actually meant to serve people, but nowadays, everyone wants to earn money, become rich, drive expensive cars and that is about it. Although these children are far from the materialistic, developed, civilized world, they are closer to God and life than anybody else is, and only they know the true meaning of life.

 

I was amazed to see how intelligent these kids are. For the first time, I did something meaningful – something for others; something for change. The time I spent teaching there, the laughs we shared, all the giggles and the smiles will stay etched in my memories.

 

Yes, we care for each other. We are citizens of the world. We are HUMANS. Our role as a citizen of Earth can be simply defined as this: Just try to make a difference, as I did. Whatever you do, wherever you are, if you are doing something for the benefit of a person or a community, you are justifying your role as a citizen of Earth.