Learn to love and care

Here I am sitting on a couch alone, thinking about what I have just finished reading with tears of sadness filling my eyes and fire of indignation filling my heart, which revived my exhausted soul that has already been covered by the cruelty and the selfishness of the secular world for a long time. It is truly what I felt after reading Oliver Twist, written by the prominent British author Charles Dickens.

    The resonance between me and the book makes me feel not only the kindness and the wickedness of all the characters in the novel, but what this aloof society lacks, and what I lack deep inside. These supreme resources I’m talking about right now are somewhat different from minerals, oil that we usually mention. They’re abstract like feelings, and some kinds of spiritual stimulation that all of us desire anxiously from one another —— love and care.

    Those charitable figures whom Dickens created in the novel are really what we need in life. They showed love and care to others, just as the gentle rain from the sky fell upon the earth, which was carved into my heart deeply.
Mr. Brownlow is one such person.

    The other day he had one of his elaborate watches stolen by two skilled teenage thieves, Artful Dodger and Charley Bates, and thought naturally it was Oliver, who was an orphan and forced to live with a gang of thieves, that had done it because he was the only one near by after the theft had taken place. Being wrathful, he caught Oliver, and sent him to the police station where the ill-tempered, unfair magistrates worked. Fortunately for him, Oliver was proved innocent by one onlooker afterwards. With sympathy, Mr. Brownlow took the injured, poor Oliver to his own home. There Oliver lived freely and gleefully for some months as if he were Mr. Brownlow’s own son. One day, however, Mr. Brownlow asked Oliver to return some books to the bookseller and to send some money for the new books that he had already collected. The thief Oliver once stayed with kidnapped him. After that he disappeared in Mr. Brownlow’s life. Searching for a while, Mr. Brownlow had to believe the fact that he had run away with his money. But dramatically, they came across each other again a few years later. Without hesitation, Mr. Brownlow took Oliver home for the second time not caring if he had done something evil.

    Perhaps most of us would feel confused about Mr. Brownlow’s reaction. But as a matter of fact, this is just the lesson we should learn from him. Jesus said in the Bible. “Forgive not seven times, but seventy-times seven.” Why is that? Because forgiveness is our ability to remove negative thoughts and neutralize them so our energy may be spent on doing what we came here for. We cannot move forward in our future if past issues cloud our thinking. Stop put Mr. Brownlow into the list of your models. Always give people a second chance no matter what they might have done. That’s also a substantial part of loving and caring others.

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