The Power of Arrogance

I've spent most of this morning working on a letter to various government authorities here in Singapore about a dangerous traffic situation that I've been complaining about for years. This came up because a friend of mine just witnessed an accident on the same stretch of road, ending in a young woman being killed in a horrific way, while onlookers took photos and gawked, she said.

I'd been keeping a log of all the calls and written complaints I've made to the authorities over the years, plus photos to back up my claims of the danger on this stretch of road. Unfortunately, I recently threw it all out, realizing I didn't have time for this while I was busy trying to stay alive. And by eerie coincidence, in the last phone complaint I made to the Traffic Police, I said, "Does somebody actually have to get KILLED before anything is done about this?"

You must be wondering if you're reading the right Blog. Or if maybe the tumors in my brain have finally reached the critical parts.

Traffic safety probably shouldn't rank very high on my list of priorities, given I have two young kids who might lose their mother very soon. But I want to do this for them. Bear with me.

Yes, my children walk along that road everyday to and from school, so I'd like to ensure measures are put into place so that such an accident doesn't happen again. But that's not the real reason for spending my very precious time and energy on this.

I have a far grander goal. I don't want Josie and Toby growing up thinking that things just ARE and they can't do anything to fix them. Traffic accidents are a very small thing in the grand scheme of things when you consider genocide, political oppression, racism, environmental destruction, oh... I could go on and on. But the feeling of being too small and powerless to change anything is the same.

Some of my friends know about a certain corrupt "businessman" I chased down some years ago. In the course of my investigation, I came upon other victims of this unscrupulous man, and when I asked why they hadn't taken action, their answers were, "I didn't think I could do anything", "The police told me they couldn't do anything", and even "The guy threatened me". One of his victims was an elderly lady who was left in tears.

If any of these other victims, or the authorities who claimed that they could do nothing, had even tried, I wouldn't have had to suffer the same fate they had. Each time this nasty character cheated someone else and got away with it, he got the message that he could keep doing it because nobody, not even the police, would or could do anything to stop him. I was a first-time mother with a newborn baby at the time but I was on a mission. It was not about getting revenge anymore. I was out to make a point.

Friends laughed at me. Tony laughed at me - until the guy showed up at our house and we had to call the police. And maybe it was a bit funny. Luckily, nobody got hurt, and the baddie got his comeuppance.

The point is, I've always had the arrogance to believe I could FIX things, even if they were little things in my own little world. Sometimes, they're little things that my own friends and family have laughed at me about, calling them petty or my efforts ineffectual. But I've always thought I had the power to do something, however small.

I want Josie and Toby to grow up with this same arrogance.