You’ll be interested to know that I work with you. You often hear about me from your dear ones, I go ear-to-ear; sometimes, if a person is passionate about helping others, they will tell you about me; sometimes, you pay to get me; and very rarely, if I feel too bad for you, I simply show up to be your friend. Depends on the kind of suffering you’ve been through, I suppose—karma, as you say.
I’m not bragging but my job is the most important in this world, and the hardest, too. In simpler words, let me explain the ground reality of the work I’ve been tasked with. I remove chewing gums from walls. People have a nasty habit of sticking their own dirt on a property that was never theirs to ruin in the first place.
Why should you know about me?That's a fair question. If you must know my sob story: I’m dying. People are killing me and my profession—they are choosing to live in filth because if they allow me to do my job, they would have to be better people too.
You would have to be a better person. You’d have to support me, and that's seemingly not acceptable anymore.
You see, chewing gums are spit out of mouths, like words, they stick. Chewing gums are like belief systems mulled over and over by people before they throw it onto the next person, stick it in the walls of another person's heart.
I’m that “guy” who cleans these useless, harmful and fear-inducing belief systems from the walls of your heart.
I’m Awareness.
Right now, now that you’ve read my little advertisement, I must be perching on your ear—if you don't take me in, a part of me dies. I beg you to accept me, and to help enliven my profession again.
I care about my job, it keeps me around. But you should care more: if I die, all of you shall.
Chewing gums are recyclable, help me reinvent better and stronger beliefs. Help me
make your mind a better place.
-Hia Vishal Panjabi
Volunteer, Editorial Committee 2024-25
Wow! So well-written!!
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