Opinions

I was out playing cards with friends, and happened to mention that the reason I hadn't printed our usual scoring paper, and instead was working on a hand-drawn paper, was that we were out of printer paper at home.

And it began...

"Well," said my friend D, "you certainly don't need to be buying printer paper, given your circumstances!"

(Said circumstances being that A is still looking for work, and we are facing having to sell our home, or go bankrupt.)

I didn't reply - I was stunned. An awful lot of things were running through my head, like, "you're kidding, right?" or "printer paper! It's a necessity, D!" or "what would you have me use instead?"

My friend S rescued me and said simply, "Well certainly if A has to print a resume, he needs to have some paper for his printer, D!"

D later said, "Well, it's not my business, but I wouldn't be wasting my money on paper if I were in your circumstances..."

And the card game went on. But my inner turmoil had just begun...

We - the generic, universal we - all have our opinions concerning the less fortunate. How they got themselves into the mess they are in. How they have no one but themselves to blame. How they are inherently lazy, untrustworthy, less intelligent than "we" are...

Until it happens to US.

These kinds of arguments about "the poor" have been going on forever, and they are all complete bunk. It's called paranoia: blaming situations on somebody or something else, instead of looking inward to find the source of the problem.

Our society has more and more people walking the knife's edge of poverty. We now have the "working poor," households where both adults work but still have to use a food bank. The gap between the richest people in our society and what used to be the middle class is widening at a frightening pace, and nobody wants to face how really close to that knife's edge they are living. Or do the work of making the rich stop fleecing the rest of us, because they're powerful and scary and we keep hoping if we're nice and obedient that they'll let us be. And maybe let more money trickle down.

But when someone falls on the wrong side of that knife's edge, judgements fall like hailstones.

I've been on the receiving end of judgements many, many times in my life. Growing up in fundamentalism will do that to you. I had to fight really hard to free myself from that kind of mindset - the mindset that judges others. That says "I don't think you should be doing this or that," or, "I don't think you should be spending your money this way or that way." That's judging. And it has a thin edge, but a steep, slippery slope.

It starts with my printer paper. Should someone "like me" be allowed to buy printer paper? Kleenex? Paper towels? Toilet paper? Are you going to tell me I have to start using single ply?

Then on to food. Do I have to stop buying fresh food, switch to canned only? And buy only the cheapest brands?

Cheap, by the way, does not equal economical! Or even healthy!

But let's continue on the list of things we decide for others: can the poor visit a dentist? On the same day he lost his job over a year ago, A cancelled his dentist appointment. But he kept an appointment for a car tune-up.

He could understand the value of maintaining the automobile, but not of maintaining his teeth. My protests that dental health impacts heart health went unheeded - no one had ever suggested such a thing to him before, so he saw no reason to believe me!

So, do poor people automatically have bad teeth? Should they let their teeth rot, because they shouldn't be spending their money on frivolities? After all, teeth are largely cosmetic...

What about no car insurance? Or are their cars dirty, because they can't pay to have them washed - and we already know they are too lazy to wash them themselves!

Glasses? Shampoo? Body wash? Books? Cable TV? Restaurants?

Where do we draw the line, when we criticize another person's choices?

Well, you say, if they hadn't made poor choices, they wouldn't be in their current predicament!

Aye, and there's the rub. You see, we are ALL victims of our own choices. We are ALL our own undoing. Just some of us haven't come undone - yet.

We all "make our own beds" or "dig our own graves." We make choices every single day of our lives that we either don't think twice about, or that we deliberate over for weeks. It doesn't matter. Because whatever choices we make change the direction of our lives, and random chance happens and we can end up on the wrong side of that knife in a heartbeat, wondering what the hell happened.

If A and I go bankrupt, I assure you, I'm not getting rid of my cats. I will find ways to have fun in life. Less expensive fun, perhaps, than I might have at one time, but I'm not dead and I'm not going to act like it until it actually happens.

I remember being on the receiving end of a Christmas basket, when my Daughter was very young - the Christmas she was 2, in fact. I stubbornly was trying to turn the givers away when I saw that there were chocolate candies in the basket, and I realized that I could not afford to buy my child any chocolate for Christmas, and that if she was going to have anything nice like that, I had to swallow my pride and accept it.

I remember Welcome Hall Mission saying that if we wanted to give something for the men, that chocolate was appreciated, because they could usually cover the necessities, but it was nice to be able to offer them a treat.

Even the poor deserve a treat. Some kindness. Something nice. Even though they've made different choices in their lives and had different experiences, they still deserve kindness and a treat and some goodness.

Nobody needs to be harangued by judgmental voices saying "you shouldn't do this" or "you shouldn't spend that" - or worse, "you shouldn't have done this..." foremost because those voices are within each of us all the time anyway, and there is no getting away from them. We don't need to add our judgmental voices to anyone's personal demons.