How a 17-year-old teaches a 69-year-old - Egg Faced Frazer.

This is how a 17-year-old can teach a 69-year-old about life.

First, you stand for what is right. 

So, the Australian teenager, 17 then, took a stand by smashing an egg on the head of an Australian (far-right) senator, 69 years old.

What did the senator do? 

Well, Fraser Anning drew “international condemnation when he blamed last month’s attacks - which left 50 people dead at two New Zealand mosques - on immigration.” 

This is his full statement: “I am utterly opposed to any form of violence within our community, and I totally condemn the actions of the gunman.” 

He could have stopped right there, but alas, he didn’t.

”However, whilst this kind of violent vigilantism can never be justified, what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand of the increasing Muslim presence.”

Growing fear? Wasn’t the 28-year-old gunman an Australian presumably on a tourist pass to New Zealand, while the 50 victims were citizens of NZ? 

Who is the so-called outsider here? Who has come from a foreign land to create the horrific act of provocation? 

Second, a 17-year-old can teach a 69-year-old about life by bringing the public together to stand for what is right. 

After William Connolly cracked an egg on Fraser’s head on 16 March, Fraser hit him several times on the face. 

But, after some investigation, the police gave William a warning. The police will not press charges against William and Fraser. 

However, it was not the ”egged-head” Fraser who got the public’s sympathy. It was in fact William who got all the right media attention. 

Now known as “Egg Boy”, spawning online memes in support, William’s egg antics “drew support from around the world, with Go-FundMe Page raising more than A$80,000 (S$77,000) to help with legal fees and...waitforit... the procurement of “more eggs””.

And thirdly, this is what William did with the funds online. He said that he would donate the money to the victims of the attack. 

You can contrast this with what the 69-year-old Fraser did or didn’t do. 

For what he had said, he had refused to apologise even after he was censured by Parliament for his ”ugly and divisive” comments. He stood by his comments. 

FYI, Fraser was elected into Parliament by a fluke when the chosen candidate was made ineligible because of dual citizenship. So you can say that he got in by an inadvertent default. 

Anyway, fluke or otherwise, the lesson I draw from this comparison is that age and experience are no reliable indicator (in some cases, not even by a long shot) of one’s character and maturity.

You can be properly schooled and advance in age but you can also be so self-conceited about what you think you know that you are no wiser than a school bully stealing another schoolboy’s lunch during recess. 

While a teen can be impulsive, he or she can also teach a grown man or old man a thing or two about human decency, human sensitivity and human kindness. 

Look at fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg who describes herself as a "climate radical". If you google her, you will read that she “is protesting outside Sweden's parliament every day until the September election, refusing to attend school and calling on politicians to take climate issues seriously.” 

And she has created quite an international storm, putting many parliamentarians to shame.

This is what I mean by taking a stand, rallying the people on the side of humanity, and egging the world on to fight for what is right, what is rightly ours and our children’s, and what is in danger of being lost - be it some virtue, some part of humanity, or in Greta’s case, the entire earth we make our home in. 

I guess that is why Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

And this is what the world needs now, not more well-credentialed experts being paid to tell us what is right and what is wrong, but more young men and women following their pure and innocent hearts fighting for a better world which they will soon inherit from us. 

If the people who have gone before them have only taught us how to hate, to horde, to extract, to exploit, to compete, to possess, and to be first at all costs, then maybe, it is time for those who are genuinely concerned about the state of the world today to pay more attention to the lost or suppressed voices of our young generation who care to take a stand, even if it means committing impulsive (innocuous) acts, just so that those who think they know better would come to admit that they in fact know no better. 

And considering that we were young once, and along the way, we may have lost our way, maybe we can find back the narrow and straight path if we just take the time to look into the eyes, hopes and dreams of our children. Cheerz.