A Sense Of Admiration

Was thinking about having a bit of a moan in a post about how difficult it was to get out of bed this morning and go to work following yesterday's unexpected holiday. Changed my mind after catching a little item on BBC World in the early evening about foreign workers here in Singapore - those from the Indian sub-continent for the most part - forming cricket teams and playing games on Sundays, the day off for most construction workers here, I'm guessing, in their own little league.

There were interviews with guys working 14 or 16 hour days (and I mean working), getting paid less than 1000 SGD a month, and sending most of that back to their families back home. None of them complained about low pay. In fact, they were more than happy, grateful indeed, to be able to earn what they did and work as hard as they were doing on a regular basis. The cricket was their way of escaping for a short while into what they really wanted to do, a way of feeling alive again.

I've never quite been able to figure out the modern cult of admiration for various worthies from the business world and the like - the sort of Donald Trump figures whom the self-help books seem to assume we all wish to be. I think there's a lot, lot more we could usefully learn from those we sometimes see as somehow beneath us. Listening to today's cricketers speak I felt small, I can tell you, but I also saw the possibility of becoming someone bigger.