"I Look Out Upon, See, Hear and I Am Silent"

I have always held this view. The streets are sad places.
You feel happy when you see balloons in one person's hand and sad in another's. You feel rejoiced to see a balloon in the hands of a kid, smiling and happy with the balloon. You feel that the world is a happy place. Then you look at another kid who curses the same balloon because that is all he can do for a living and yet, the balloons are not so kind to him; they won't sell. You see the morose look on his face and the story of a lowly life in his eyes, brimming with tears, or dreams. Perhaps dreams that he thinks he just may bring into reality one day. Seeing this, you question the 'Happy' world. You see the kid trying to make money with balloons in a world where virtual media has taken over the simple pleasures of life. I remember those days when balloons in the hand was a greater pleasure than any modern gadget that you dream of having. You see the kid and you feel for him, but, what can you do? Nothing. And you feel bad about this; that whatever you do, you cannot help the kid in that moment. The kid needs money, his family needs money and you feel like you can help, but, then you realise that you need money, too and that the 'simple pleasure' is not worth the cost. Not worth or not affordable, one of those. Something that seemed so simple is now so costly that you hesitate to lend a hand to help someone crawl up by a tiny, negligible bit, even though your heart cries out, bleeds out for you to lend that hand. Yet, you won't. You can't. Something else is ruling over your heart. You realise that you yourself are in a helpless state. The question 'How will I help somebody else?' will keep hitting you at the back of head with a sledgehammer and you won't be able to stop it. Whatever plans you had of buying the simple pleasures or even helping the kid, all vanish at once. It's like how Walt Whitman says in his poem,

"[I sit and look out upon]All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent."

I did not like him for saying that even though I partly agreed with him, a year ago. I see his point, now. I agree with him entirely. I sit and look out upon on all these miseries and I do nothing. I can do nothing. After all this, you realise that the world might not be that happy a place after all. Not everything is rainbows, some of it, most of it, is thunderstorm. Every moment of some lives is thunderstorm of the worst kind. This makes you think and contemplate and feel sad about all of it and, now, you know for a fact that the colourful Earth is not a stack of rainbows. It's just another abstract spillage of various colours. And at some point in the canvas, a bit too much of 'black' got dumped, which smudged itself all across the rest of the canvas. It made sure that it can be seen in the brightest of colours.You see that the world is like this and will be like this, even though it shouldn't be. You know that you can't make a change to this. But, then, you recollect all those people, and perhaps yourself, who spend on pointless pleasures when there is so much more you could do with it. You recollect the expenditure on things which pleasure you for a mere instant, gone with the next wind that touches your skin. And even then, you know that you can't help it because in that moment of pointless expenditure, these things will rarely strike you. Even if they do, the urge and excitement to buy the thing that you think will make you 'happy' destroys your conscience to lend a hand. The next thing you know, you're carrying home a nice shopping bag made of posh plastics. Perhaps, the same plastics the kid wanted to sell, just with some extra effort and tonnes of hope. It rarely strikes you. Well, that's how it is and you know it.
Rousseau believed that the dawn of reason was where the dawn of the demise of happiness of man began. He said that with the dawn of reason, man began of think of 'mine and thine.' Come to think of it, Rousseau is right. One doesn't need historical evidence to prove this. The present is evidence enough and you are witness enough.
I saw the kid with the balloon today, like every other day. I was not able to do anything, like every other day.