Imagine a playground burning with the kind of energy only sugar-fueled children could have on a Sunday afternoon. The slides are overflowing with two-foot, three-foot-tall kids racing each other, screaming and playing tag. The sickly-sweet scent of popcorn and cotton candy lingers in the air in pink, blue and cinnamon. They have all the flavours.
Now, imagine a little boy sitting on the furthest swing,alone!
That’s what Global Dignity Day is. It’s not about finding the poorest person and making yourself feel better by giving them a few extra rupees. It’s about going up to that little boy, sitting next to him, and making him feel like maybe, just maybe, he’s not alone.
Global Dignity Day, one day out of three hundred sixty-five, takes place on the third Wednesday of October. That’s twenty-four hours delegated to your fellow humans, the ones you share this planet with, feel like they are worth sharing this planet with you.
It’s easy to mistake Global Dignity Day as an opportunity to make some grand gesture that people will praise us for. But in reality, the real motive behind this day is for us to come to terms with the fact that dignity is the smallest act of kindness. The tiniest ounce of empathy. The minutest atom of respect.
These are what actually make up Global Dignity Day. I could give you a litany of actions that you could do on this day that will change the world. But let’s face the music.
As students, most of us can’t really afford to solve world hunger. What we can do, however, is make sure our fellow peers are heard. We can make sure they feel understood. We can make sure that our words aren’t the ones that hurt them. We can make sure to treat them with the kindness every human that lives on this planet deserves to be treated with.
Global Dignity Day is a day that is the result of a chain reaction of small, but meaningful, kind actions and reactions. No good deed goes unnoticed. So, the next time you see a little boy sitting alone, maybe go sit beside him not because you feel bad for him, but because you know that’s what Global Dignity Day is about.
