Lion

Last weekend I saw a movie called Lion. The story, about finding home, was touching, but the most memorable part of movie for me was when the main character said:

“We swung about in our privileged lives. It makes me sick.”

    privileged – having special advantages or rights

As a citizen of a third world country living in a first world country, this is something I can understand. Sometimes the differences between the country where I am now and the country where I grew up in bothers me. For me, children sleeping on the streets and mothers carrying rocks to earn a little money to feed her children are not just movie characters. They are real people.

I guess this is one of the reasons why I am against the drug war in the Philippines. I believe that the people getting shot on the streets are mostly poor people who use drugs to forget their hunger or sell drugs because they have no other ways of earning money.

I don’t think I will ever forget the time when I and a student were talking about the Philippine drug war, and he said that the killings were good and President Duterte should kill more people.

I was horrified.

    horrified – shock greatly; fill with horror

It’s so hard for me to understand how someone can ever say something like that, but I guess that those people have died doesn’t matter much to him. But I want to believe that even privileged can be more informed and empathetic of people who live less fortunate lives.