By Ye Zhian
Translated by Wang Jing
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to U.S. President Obama in praise of "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people". Just like many former Nobel Peace prize winners, Obama's winning of the honor has also drawing various discussions with different opinions. However, according to my surmise, picking out Obama from hundreds of individuals and groups, the Nobel Committee should not have made an arbitrary or random decision. Well, for this moment, I just think of the winner 30 years ago, that is Mother Teresa, who "dedicated her life to serving the poor, the sick and the lonely people". Chinese Version >>
According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be granted to "the person who has made the greatest effort or contribution to the promotion of ethnic unity and friendship, canceling or cutting standing army and organizing and publicizing peace conference." Strictly speaking, viewing from the three prize winning framework set by Nobel, it seems that Mother Teresa did not "reach the standard", at least not directly "reach the standard", because the Missionaries of Charity she had founded belonged to a loose folk organization. So, it is hard to accomplish something that can "promote ethnic unity and friendship”, neither even to "make the greatest effort or contribution to the canceling or cutting standing army and organization and organizing and publicizing peace conference", however, up until now, no one in the international society has expressed his dissent. Why? The reason is simple: the world needs "slum saints" who do their best to eradicate poverty, just like Mother Teresa. The human society needs the holy deed going beyond districts, ethnicity and beliefs and it is advocated by Mother Teresa.
Within a rather long period of time in the history, limited by the thinking of cold war and ideology, people restricted the idea of love to relatively parochial social groups, using the thinking mode of "if not my race, must be heterodoxy" to understand and show the behaviour of love. Examining from the concept of harmonious society in modern society, it is really a kind of insolence and crankiness lacking of public codes of human society. Today, because of the progress of the era and the promotion of thinking, people finally understand a plain principle, that is, life should be respected! This is also what Kofi Annan, former U.N. Secretary, said: "every life, no matter its race or belief, has the same dignity and right".
Speaking of the topic of "life should be respected", I cannot help thinking of a story: Mother Teresa help settle down dozens of homeless, poor and sick people. An old man among them held Mother Teresa's hand and murmured in Bengali: "I have been living like a dog for my whole life, but now I am dying like a person. Thank you." I can imagine the old man's misery of "living like a dog", and I can also understand his mood of "dying like a person." But I can hardly find proper words to praise the occasion or moment like that. Today, it is known even to women and children for the principle that "life should be respected." However, many people just say it with mouths; they may not want to or be able to practice it in reality. Only conscious people like Mother Teresa can combine consciousness and practice together.
Obama won the prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people", however, such reason is of course unquestionable. I am just thinking about whether the Nobel Committee can recall their comments while granting Mother Teresa the prize just like me? If not, I can give some hint:
Her career has an important feature: showing respects to the individuality and congenital value of human. Those who are loneliest and most miserable have received her most sincere care. This kind of sentiment comes from her respect to human, without any attitude of arrogance and almsgiving. She has successfully bridged the gap between rich countries and poor countries, and she has set up a bridge between the two with the concept of respecting human dignity.
I privately regard this as the saying that all the people around the world should remember!