I Don't Belong to This Place

I was having a conversation with my friend the other day about my past experiences, and at one point, she said, " I cannot imagine any one wanting to harm you."

Sometimes, people hate us for what we do, no matter we do good or bad. Some people have hearts that could easily convert enviousness, jealousy and frustration into seeds of hatred. As the seeds start to grow, looking at the face of the hated person becomes so annoying, and as the hatred grows stronger, and the agony becomes unbearable, they would start thinking of harming the person in order to satisfy their intolerable dissatisfaction . At this point, the pain and misery of the hated person are something to be smile upon, a pleasure and satisfaction to the heart.

When I started working in this place about a decade ago, some people didn't like me and my style. These people thought that I was a threat to their income. I didn't do much overtime in a place where people quarrelled for overtime, people do all sort of things for overtime. At that time, normal daily overtime was 4 hours but I used to do 2 hours and knocked off, unless I was really required to stay on for some urgent tasks. These people passed bad remarks about me at my back, but I don't care as I wanted to live life the way I liked. After a while, a few other workers started to follow my way.

Some people had the impression that I had large amount of money, the reason for not having interest in working overtime. My answer to them was, "I don't have a lot of money, but I have enough money to live a happy life". Those are two different things, there are very rich people who are not satisfied with the wealth they possess, and having a large amount of money does not always ensure happiness.

After a few years, the company was going through some financial difficulties that they decided to reduce the normal daily overtime to 3 hours. At that time, a lot of people were upset with the decision, and a few even felt that, what I was doing might had influenced the company to come up with such an idea.

At one time, the company sent me for a type course. In order for an Aircraft Engineer to certify for tasks carried out on a specific type of aircraft, he has to attend a course for that aircraft type, do some practical training and sits for an examination. After passing through all this, he will be paid monthly allowances for that aircraft type and every other types that he has, more types means more money.

Even though that every Engineers would eventually be sent for type courses, just a matter of waiting, but the fact that I was sent first had set fire to the emotions of a few Engineers. The very sad thing was, most of them were my friends. They uttered unpleasant words to me and spread words of hatred at my back to satisfy their anger. One of them even refused to talk to me.

I never thought that jealousy could bring down the moral of an educated person to such a disgusting level.

When I was asked to perform a lead function for a few months, I did things a bit different from the way it was managed previously. I didn't ask people to do extended hours unless it was necessary, and people hated me for that as well, as they were so used to being fed with extended hours all the while by previous leaders. At that time, a lot of people questioned my approach of doing things, they didn't like my way. I was hated for trying to, in a very soft and slow approach, improve the working conditions towards better professionalism. After the period was over, I prayed that I won't have to function as a leader anymore.

"They" are just a small bunch of people, very few in number, and I'm quite sure that these type of people are in other places as well. They are the people who go around planting the seeds of hatred and disharmony. They seem to be good in their approach and the way they talk that people would sit and listen to them. They are the people who act like viruses that spread the disease around the place with their words. They are the experts in assassinating a character. They greet us with big smiles but deep in their hearts, lie some wild, ugly serpents.

As human beings, we are bound to feel envy and jealous, to feel uneasy or mortified with another person's achievement. We also encounter changes that disturb our routine, our tradition of doing things the old way and we tend to reject the efforts made for betterment. We also watch people and friends reaching something that we had been dreaming for long.

Sometimes, the feeling of hatred arise unexpectedly, shall we let it breed in ourselves, or shall we show it the way out and resolve our dissatisfaction in a more civilised manner?


life