Skip to main content

Old People.

Brazil has this really really cool law that anyone who is elderly, pregnant, or disabled has priority in queues and on busses. It really is such an amazing way of valuing and taking care of these people who already face difiiculties in life. It's amazing to see how people also really respect the principle of this law. If an old person comes to the front of the queue where people might have been stood for hours, there is no complaining. And if a pregnant woman stands at the back, she is quickly encouraged to go to the front.

It is also good that the elderly over a certain age get to go for free on the buss, and hence enter the buss at the front as opposed to the back (where paying customers get on). It's good because it means that you know that they are elderly and need a seat. I guess because of genetics, but also the sun and toughness of life, people age much younger here. A woman who is mabye 50 might look to me like she is in her late 60s.

I was reflecting on how good this law is the other day as I was sat in an eye-clinic with one of the girls from the community. But as I looked around me there, there were 90% old people, and so I guess the law doesn't really come to much use there, and everyone must wait their turn.

This is one thing in the Brazilizn society which brings value to people and something we can all be a part of.

Popular posts from this blog

Packing...again.

I just folded the last load of laundry and I’m almost packed. Off to the airport at 5am tomorrow morning, heading off to Amsterdam. I’m excited, a bit nervous, and wondering what it’ll be like. It’s been a good week at home with lots of quality time with family, especially the little nieces and nephew. I’m glad I’ll see them in April again. Well, not much to write and packing to be done and a bit of sleep would probably be a good idea too. Next time I write it’ll be from Amsterdam....

Single-tasking September: The art of single-tasking.

To change habits and ways of life, the motivation for change has to be strong, and the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to make the change.  For so long it’s seemed like the ability to multitask has been regarded as a great skill, but is it really a good thing? Recovering from burn-out, one of the effects I noticed was that it was harder to concentrate, and especially tricky trying to focus on many things at once. I’d try to multitask, only to realise that all tasks suffered from lack of capacity to complete any one of them. The challenge is that the habit of always doing many things at once goes deep, and when I tried to focus on just one thing, I found that it was actually really difficult.  As I did a little google search on the matter, I found it seems like multitasking isn’t as healthy as once thought, and that it doesn’t help productivity. Some even referred to it as “switch tasking”, in the sense that the brain isn’t doing many things at once, but shifting rapidly...

Reality starting to hit...

Today has been quite a sad day as it is slowly dawning on my that I'm not going to be here for much longer. It's now less than a month till I leave, and I feel sad. Sad to leave what has been a life for me. Sad to leave so many wonderful people. Sad to not be able to continue to fight for and invest in all the streetkids, families, prisonkids, and other random people I've been fighting for all these years. I doesn't feel like I'm giving up, but it does feel like I'm going to be left with a kind of void where all these people were in my life. I guess not knowing the BIG "what next..." doesn't help, but I do have peace. Peace that the God who called me here, and has kept me here, is still the same. Peace that He will guide me and walk with me. Even so...today I felt sad.