You either choose to help others, or you don't choose to help others... THERE IS NO IN-BETWEEN!

I want to tell you a PROFOUND STORY that I've barely told anyone. Many years back in Hamilton, ON - the place I reside in. Each year they hold a gathering festival at the pier. Every year there's; booths, food, trinkets and live music.

This one year after hearing a great Canadian band called "The Tea Party", I was walking with some friends down the grass hill when I saw a large group of strangers hovering over something happening.

My curiosity got the best of me, so I too like many others hurried to see what all the commotion was all about, come to find out that people were watching 6 guys absolutely pound on some young teenager on the ground that you couldn't even recognize anymore.

The Lion in my instantaneously yelled "hey, what in the world are you doing!" and ran up to those individuals harming the teenager and one by one started throwing them off him.

I didn't care to be a hero, I wasn't scared for my life since they could have turned onto me next, but it was the right thing to do.

Once they all cleared in a hurry, I knelt down and seeing this poor kids face, hardly could recognize what he looked at, I placed my hands on his face to stop the bleeding and kept saying to him, "It's going to be alright, you're going to be just fine. Listen to my voice; you're going to be just fine."

The paramedics showed up and said "weren't you afraid of getting hurt?”, “I said no!”, then they said "What about diseases like AIDS touching his blood", I replied, "If saving a man’s life has consequences, then so be it, I'm ready to deal with those consequences".

The hardest part for me was that when I got up, I saw a man with his 7-9 year old child watching the whole thing happen.

I immediately went to the man and said, "Is this what you’re trying to teach your son? To just stand there and watch?"... The man replied "what is it to you?"... "I held up my bloody hands and started veering towards his son, not to hurt him, but so that he understood that this was wrong, someone just got hurt"... The man quickly felt fear in his eyes and understood my message and turned the other way to leave without saying a word.

In life, when presented with moments like these, you have two choices, you can either watch someone get hurt, or you can be the better person and help others so they don't get hurt.

It's your choice!

The Buddhist Chain - Find more stories and images on my Facebook page.

Namaste
Martin R. Lemieux