I like to think of myself as a good person. Yes, I am a good person. I never make a deliberate decision to inflict pain on another person. If that happens, I apologise. Although being human, I sometimes falter, I always ask myself how I would feel if the same thing was done to me; the biblical principle of doing unto others what you would want them to do for you.

However, one wonders what goes on in the minds of sadists. Were they born that way? Are they cursed? Are they a product of their upbringing? What is wrong with them?

Take a robber, who breaks into people’s houses and disposseses them of the things they have worked hard for; what they have earned. In a recent ordeal involving people I hold very dear, one, holding them hostage while his friends rush off to withdraw money from their accounts tells them he is only doing this to support his children. How about the children who are helplessly watching their parents bound and at his mercy? Would his children be proud if they knew how their father earns his keep?

It is bad enough that they let themselves into people’s properties and dispossess them but why go on and kill? Why sexually violate helpless people? Why hijack for the car and further disrupt life? Where is the pleasure in that?

Then there is a nurse, a doctor, a medical worker who has no value for human life and whose heart is devoid of empathy. Many lives are lost at the hands of these merciless human beings. Someone I know once slapped a doctor who tore at his wound without due consideration. Of course there are good medical practitioners out there who were fully conscious of their career choice. To the heartless in this profession, what if the patient was your parent, child, sibling, relative?

How about a colleague who backstabs others and does everything to win the supervisor’s trust at the expense of others? They are called ambitious and they will stop at nothing to reach the top, even if it means losing those that matter. Still at work, we all know this supervisor who thrives in humiliating subordinates, who never appreciates good work but is very swift to point out mistakes.

World, what have we come to? Why has life lost value? Why are we conniving and mean? Why have we lost respect for others? Why are we self seeking? Why do we defraud our own?

The more I think about this rot, I am drawn to the conclusion that life is hard to figure out. My escape is in God and him alone.