The values that this elderly woman carried is more than noble all right, translated…
The elderly woman is eighty years old, she is a person who picks up recycling materials to make a living. There are, so many difficulties in life, and, it’s all caused, by the changes, that sometimes makes us lose everything all at once, when we have absolutely NOTHING left the only thing we can hold on to, is our own self-respect; and, maybe, the elderly woman feels that way, which is why no matter how hard life gets, she’d refused the help from others.
Once, there was, a van of do-gooders who’d come from some foundation, with a lot of donated goods to give to the elderly woman. And, someone was shooting the pictures constantly, said that they can help the elderly woman fix up her house, the elderly woman told them no over and over and over again, and in the end, she’d selected a t-shirt out of the box of donated goods, to rush those who’d came to give her aid away. And, ever since, if someone knocks on her doors, she’d no longer answered, and instead, she’d installed a hidden doorbell at the top of the outside of her door, she’d just told those who were closest to her about the doorbell she’d installed. The elderly said, “If you think my house is too beaten up, then, don’t come to visit me. You can come visit me as a friend, but don’t come visit me, because you feel sorry for me.”
The elderly woman, because of her aches and pains, had come to the city of Hualien to see the physicians, and, it’s really expensive, to hire a cab to drive from the village into the city of Hualien, and, normally, it’d cost the elderly’s earnings for an entire month for her recycling, and yet, the prices of recycled materials had dropped, she’d often picked up the recycling materials for an entire week, and sold them for under six hundred dollars, but the elderly woman didn’t want anybody’s pity, and would refuse it if someone tries to lower the prices she needs to pay for her supplies. What’s more respectable was, that I’d once seen the elderly woman placed the money she’d made from recycling to the donations boxes outside of the super convenience stores, and she’d always replied shyly, “I don’t have large sum of money, and all I’d placed inside the box are one dollar coins.”
I’d moved to this distant country for over four years now, and, living next-door to the elderly woman, I was more than touched by her nobility, although her living below the poverty lines made her home unkempt, I’d still believed, that wherever she’s living, was a place of cleanliness.
So, it’s the values that this elderly woman showed that’s touched the writer, and, the elderly woman, although she is living off hard, she’d refused the assistance of others, because she believes she’s still able bodied, and, she’d lived off of what she’d made, and if that’s not amazing, I don’t know what it…