Miracle Of The Midnight Child

Down on the street it sounds like a Kung - Fu fight in a fairground. But it's not. It's just Hong Kong sliding slowly off the greasy pavement back into the sea...

I left my heart in Hong Kong, by the Man - Mo Temple, where I did something so shameful that I find it hard to talk about it, even here.
Now, in my hip pocket I carry a small stone replica heart. It was a gift, one that I cherish, and I'll be taking it with me wherever I go from now on. After all, it's come this far already...
Here, I've been wandering aimlessly, heartbroken and humming with insomnia and jet lag, passing unnoticed among the crowds like a phantom or pale shadow.
Everywhere I went I caught sight of myself reflected in shopfronts and taxi cab windows, that look of hollow eyed animal shame upon my face. And my face was always there, inescapable. Right under my nose, as it were...
In and out of my hotel room, half awake and half my time spent waiting for elevators, or in elevators, unable to turn off the engine of my mind that drove on along the same pathetic self pitying lines, crackling like a broken radio.
I wasn't even sure where I was or where I'd been most of the time. My eyes were naked, aching flames, blind and barely flickering.
I found myself back at my hotel at around midnight waiting, again, for yet another elevator, trying to get to the thirteenth floor, when I was suddenly aware of a tiny face looking up at me with beautiful, dark brown, almond shaped eyes. A tiny oriental angel, probably about three or four years old with her smiling but watchful grandparents. She just stared at me innocently, this flower, and I couldn't help but look at her with love and I was surprised to find myself smiling, my mood suddenly and completely changed.
And seeing her made me think about what I had done and I felt truly ashamed of myself and saddened to the soul.
I imagined that beautiful child there seeing me in my rage and wrath and how she would have felt, how she would have been afraid of me. How that wretched scene would have disturbed her and in my minds eye I wandered back further into my own past and reflected on the things I had seen as a child, both good and bad, and how I they had affected me, how they affect me still.
I realised that a change was coming. A line was being drawn and I would have to make a supreme effort to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again. Because we have to prepare the way for those children, those gifts of heaven, who's lives may be hard enough without our pride and stubbornness making their way any more difficult for them.
What a lesson I learned there, caught in her honest gaze. It was like a hammer blow to my conscience.
The incredible responsibility that we have as human beings and the amazing and sometimes frightening power that we have to make each other feel either pleasure or pain.
It's not something to ever be taken lightly. It's something to be thankful for and to be used wisely, always remembering that those children will inherit the world that we make and mould and assume this awesome and continuing responsibility for themselves one day.