Waiting for my Lebanese passport.

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Last Saturday, I went to fetch my Passport from the center of general security. Although, it was not my first time there, I was very surprised by how messy everything was.

To be objective, the general security officers (or most of them) were truly doing their best: trying to organize as possible the procedures, insisting on respecting the waiting line and working quickly to answer the huge amount of requests. They were nice and polite, and they tried as much as possible to help us.

While waiting there, I discovered that the reason behind this “chaos” is our attitude and by “our” I mean the people who were waiting.

Most of us do not mind coming late and sneaking to the middle of line pretending that we did not really notice where the line ends. We think it is smartness to ignore others just for the sake of comforting ourselves. We do not respect each other morally of physically. We come with missing paper and ask for “machilna yeha” and when the officer refuse we object and we put blame on this officer because “eno jeyi tsta2wi 3layi”. Moreover, if we know any officer with a good rank we ask him without shame to help us first.

I totally agree that the system of the general security shall be more organized. The procedures shall be done using computers and numeric data; this will save us time and energy. We have the right to be respected as citizens and to get our papers quickly.

However, this does not give us the right to break the rules.

Blaming other for the corruption, we are responsible of, is something we do every single day. We want a modern and organized country but we are not willing to do any effort. We nag about the unorganized public institutions but we forget that the people we blame are part of our society; most probably, they are our friends, our neighbors or our acquaintances. We forget that we are the victim and the executioner, we are the sufferer and the disease, and we forget that we are the only ones capable of changing our lives and build a country for which we all ask.

Just let us think about this every time we cross a red light, every time we text while driving, every time we throw garbage on roads, every time we pay bribes…Let us think about it every time we vote for those who only care about their interests.

Think about it and you will see that we are responsible and nothing is going to change unless we decide to take actions.

Change does not come from nothing. We should work hard to deserve it.

Rihab