One Day

Although I don't always see eye to eye with our Minister of Labour, Majeed Al Alawi, I have to admit that on occassion he does speak a lot of sense. Perhaps the motives behind his speeches aren't always that noble (or perhaps they are, I can't be too sure), but when he makes a good point, man, he makes a damn good point.

Yesterday Dr Majeed spoke about our laziness as a people, as a country, as a region. He warned of an 'Asian Tsunami' as he called it, because of our reliance on foreign labour to perform the simplest of jobs.

It's true though. We have become accustomed to the lazy life; we have maids hired to get us a glass of water because we can't be bothered to walk to the kitchen, or to tidy our beds because, well, it's too much work for us to do. We have workers at supermarkets and cafeterias who walk to our vehicle to take our order, just because opening the car door and walking in to get what we want sounds like too much effort. We have people hired to carry out the simplest tasks from making our tea, washing our cars, cooking our food, to ironing our clothes, just because we are the elite who have no reason in life to lift a finger. After all, we are supreme.

Aren't we?

Cheap labour has it's benefits. We become kings, queens, princes and princesses. We sit there, every command taken care of by our servants, our slaves. We become something great, we rise above everyone else. We are great.

Aren't we?

Or maybe it's not so great. Maybe we become lazy, we become accustomed to not having to do anything. We stop learning how to do the bed, how to cook, how to depend on ourselves. We forget, and the most simple tasks start becoming heavy chores. And then come our children, and obviously we throw this 'lavish' lifestyle onto them, so now they're the ones who feel superior and great, and do not have to lift a finger, do not have to learn how to do anything.

But sooner or later you're going to need to know how to do something. This lifestyle isn't going to last for ever; one day all of this is going to go away, as the Asian countries start regaining economic strength, and the workers find it much more attractive to head back home. One day when this lifestyle becomes too expensive to maintain, and your superior self won't be able to afford it. One day when you head to a different country where this sort of thing isn't the norm, and you're going to have to do things yourself. One day when this over-the-top lifestyle fades away, and you're left in a mess, not knowing what to do, or how to act.

One day.

For another interesting issue previously brought up by our Minister of Labour, click here