Words, actions of Mother Teresa come floating back
Thailand is hosting another gripping episode of “Man versus Nature”, this time involving 12 young football players and their 25-year old coach trapped in a dangerous cave in Chiang Rai for more than two weeks.
The entire world has been gripped by the Thai football story, concurrent with the dramatic World Cup in Russia. Two adept British cave divers, the death of a dedicated former-Thai Navy diver, the hillside accident involving 10 rescue team members, and the world’s media, experts and critics have all engaged our attention, made us witting or unwitting debating partners.
What stands out though, even as a multinational rescue team began extraction operations yesterday, is the care, the empathy and emotions, bravery, sacrifice and the ingenious use of technology to actually save human lives, as we await the outcome of the rescue mission. We in Thailand and the world over need to be reminded of “caring responsibility”. We need to be reminded that the world and all its allurements and dangers in relation to nature will cherish caring, particularly for the responsibilities we face as enlightened individuals in our common home, the Earth. The rescue efforts in Chiang Rai recall a sobering truth from Saint Teresa of Calcutta: “The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.”
Glen Chatelier
Bangkok
