How everyday objects and individuals carry meaningful stories
Whenever I come back from somewhere, if there is a stone on the way, I kick it forward. When I get near it again, I kick it once more, and I keep doing this until it lands somewhere out of my reach. I’m sure everyone has done this at some point. But do you ever wonder how long that stone has been there? How did it come to be here?
When you see a broken, chewed pencil on the ground, you might think it’s garbage and toss it away. But do you ever wonder how many stories it wrote, or how it helped a student solve questions that led to their success? Even an old wooden table has a story: from a struggling person collecting wood from the forest to sell so they could buy something nice for a loved one, to a craftsman spending hours shaping it perfectly, to being sold to someone who had just bought a house and saw that table as the perfect fit for their room.
Everything we see has a story. Maybe most of the things we come across daily don’t look special to us, but to someone else, they might be deeply emotional. Imagine you give a child a toy—a doll, a teddy bear, a toy car. They play with it every day, and after some time, it earns a place in their heart. Years pass, and the toy is lost. If you gave that time-worn toy to another child, they might not like it because of its condition. But if you gave it back to the child who originally owned it, they would cherish it, perhaps even more than they did as a kid, because now it represents a part of their childhood.
After all, it’s not the things themselves that are special; it’s the people behind them. And if it is humans who have the ability to make things special, doesn’t that make every individual special? How can we look down on someone, knowing how special they are? Sometimes we might talk rudely to a server in a restaurant, a delivery worker, or a domestic helper without realising how important they might be to their family and friends.
At the end of the day, you will treat people however you choose. But perhaps try treating them like a person who is treasured and has feelings. Try to treat them the way you want the people you treasure to be treated. This little appreciation and respect don’t cost you much, but they might make someone’s day.
The writer is a Class 8th student at Public School, Anantnag
Aaisha Ishfaq Dar
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