Traveling along the PIE this afternoon in a cab I suddenly had a morbid turn of mind. It happens a lot these days, Elroy would tell you.
I thought, in the event of a horrific car accident - don't ask me why I always think of this when riding in a cab - how would bystanders act upon seeing my horribly wrangled body?
They'd have to search through my belongings and look for my NRIC or my civil service card, or my phone to find the contact number of my next of kin.
These are the items tagged to my person that would give them a name to a "Jane Doe". Without them, I'm just another statistic. Faceless, without identity, among a throng of Singaporeans.
Without these tags that tie me to social constructs of citizenship and personal worth, is the harsh reality that I am just a little better than roadkill?
What about the thousands who perished in the World Trade Centre September 11 attacks? All faceless victims, remembered and known only by their mothers, wives, sons and daughters.
In such multitudes, I wonder how it is that each of us truly counts and matters.
Yet the amazing truth is that in the eyes of God our Creator, no such physical tags are necessary for us to be numbered, named, and identified.
No scrolling down the phonebook is required for God to recognize who I am, even though I am only one in 6 billion living on this earth. Not to mention the billions who have since passed through this life and into the next.
So here I am gazing at my two sleeping babies.
So very young, and full of promise.
And I hope and pray that they will never ever experience a moment of doubt in life that they are just a nameless face in the crowd, no matter what circumstances they find themselves in.
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