Looking Around Us...

Today on my way back home from SMU( F1 training), I stumbled onto this very interesting pedestrian crossing. Its at a cross junction, and some people and me were waiting to cross the street...then I noticed the sign" Pedestrian crossing not operational from 9 am to 11 am and 5pm to 9pm ". Then I glanced on the road, then there were some words written on it" Not in operation from  9 am to 11 am and 5pm to 9pm"...I was like " zhun bo"...then I glanced at my watch( 5.25 pm)...by then 5 people including me have gathered there and waiting for the green man to become green. So after noticing the other traffic lights and noticing the trend of the traffic lights, I realised that this is indeed true, and decided to cross the road by another route. As I walked away, I heard one of the man telling his wife and kid in chinese " why it doesn't work?"..and I noticed the 2 ang moh tourists looking bewildered. I deliberated whether to enlighten them( the SG mindset of 'not my problem' was surfacing)...eventually I did. I told the man that it's after 5 pm le, so they couldn't cross. Then I was wondering whether the ang mohs will get the msg, so after 3 seconds of hesitation, I walked up to them and told them that the sign said that it is currently not operational...and they were like " Oh..no wonder"...lolz. As I crossed to the other side of the road, I noticed another group of people also waiting at the same point. I was thinking whether to shout out to them...but decided not to le...

Definitely this got me thinking, how come when there are obvious signs, why people can still overlook it and eventually tried to do the foolhardy thing like trying to cross the road though there is heavy traffic. It very much reflects how we approach things in life as well, there are obvious signs and yet due to the ' eh...isnt this to be a normal thing' mindset, we ignore the signs and decided to just do what is supposedly 'normal'.

Another point is that as humans, we have a tendency to only see ourselves only. Take from this example for instance, the signs were put up, the words were written on the road...how come no one noticed it? Does it mean that we just cross the road without looking at the road? The 2nd group I noticed were talking among themselves without noticing that they couldn't cross the road. Which brings me to a point that I read recently in a book about Confucius. There is something about "When eating , do not talk, just focus on eating". It sounds like something on table manners right?..lolz..But in actual fact, I interpret this as if one is doing something, one should focus on that thing and not try to multi task and be distracted by other stuff. I think this phrase is applicable to many situations, had the pedestrians sort of 'concentrate' on crossing, then they would have notice this weird traffic rule.

When you are at life's cross-roads, does one knows what and which path is best suited for him? and will he choose the best one?