I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking as the spring fever bug has caught me. Many changes took place in the last year, and I suppose my age is catching up as well.

As I get ever closer to the big 5-0, I seem to see more of what is around me. I also find my mind wandering over life,  where I come from, where I’m going and how I can impact more humanely the world I live in. Is it age? Possibly. With any luck it’s the wisdom I always heard came with age.

Let me drift back for a moment just to bring you up to speed.

I was born into this world to a mother and father from very different backgrounds. My mother was from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak, and my father was from the side of plenty. They divorced when I was 5 and that left mom a single parent of 4. With no recourse to get child support back in those days, she had to do it alone.

My mom had to rely on her parents to help her get on her feet. They babysat, provided transportation, money, food all basic necessities for mom to do what was needed. She chose to go back to school, and for that there wasn’t any extra help. Mom applied for welfare, got it and we moved so she could attend college.

After college, my mom moved us back to the town she grew up in, I suppose she felt some measure of comfort with her parents close by. She started work at the local hospital as a Respiratory Therapist.

I grew up in poverty. You might suppose not since my mother was an educated female, but we had a few strikes against us. First, we lived in a tiny little town that really had little in the way of abundance. Second, my mother had serious issues. Mental issues likely, though undiagnosed. My mother was a hoarder and she frequently found herself overwhelmed with kids needing attention that she couldn’t quite give, she also suffered with a great deal of guilt. She didn’t have the ability to enforce rules, basically providing the stability and structure we all desperately needed. All of this together created a situation where we as children were frequently sent into the store to buy things for her because she had written so many bad checks and couldn’t bear to face the humiliation. It also created a cycle I didn’t identify until later.

Poor means different things to different people. To me it meant having to wear my cousins castoffs when she outgrew things, though we were the same size, but grandma ‘fixed’ them so I could somehow fit my body into them anyway. Being poor meant, eating really great for a few days after payday but by the end of the month, if lucky, eating hamburger helper without meat. If there wasn’t food, I would spend a great deal of time going through my list of ‘friends’ hoping someone would invite me to stay for dinner, or offer to buy my lunch at school.

Being poor also meant being told I couldn’t go into certain stores because after all we could never afford things in there anyway. Being poor meant hiding from the world because no one was allowed to see our lives out of fear, and all of this was made clear on the day my mother was turned in for unsanitary environment and given one month to clean her house up or we would be forced into foster care.

Why am I writing this?

Because many things have come to light lately. Not even for me, but for those around me. My kids father recently was diagnosed with a heart problem. He has been in ER twice now, and when I asked my son why his father thinks he should go to work right after, David said it was out of necessity. Which made me think about some things I think are really screwed up about how we view people and our role in supporting each other during times like that.

Everyone I know hates the welfare system in this country. And why shouldn’t we? It’s pretty messed up.  The problem is, enough of us think of this country as a capitalistic society where if you make it, you’re doing ok and if you don’t well too bad for you because clearly you didn’t try hard enough.

This country no longer allows for people without college degrees the right to do anything. We keep pushing kids through the education system, awarding them for showing up, having no expectations and even asking teachers to cheat the exam results so it appears the failure rate no longer exists! Then we send people into the world to be resourceful when all we’ve taught them is how to cheat.

My son applied right after graduating high school to Radio Shack and was told he wasn’t qualified because he would need at least an AA degree. What’s up with that??? To work the counter? To be a sales associate? Really?

There are many ways we are failing in this country. Closing our eyes to the reality of that isn’t fixing it. Over the Christmas Holidays, my sister informed me that in her community, the one I talked about growing up in, there are at least 10% identified homeless. How can we stand for this? Why do we think this is ok? How did we become such a cruel and inconsiderate country? And what right do we have to attempt to tell the rest of the world how wrong they are living, when we have so very many people without basic necessities?

There was a time when poor was rectifiable. There was a time when many were poor but they could go off on their own, find a piece of property, work the land, build with their own two hands a place to provide shelter, and eat the food they harvested. Today people can’t do that. It’s illegal. There are laws about structure, laws about land ownership, cities have no garden space and people are forced to doorways of shops for shelter. Do some of them choose it? Perhaps. And to those I wish them peace.

We are forcing children with no rights into the streets to fend for themselves and live in environments that we wouldn’t allow animals to live in. How did we get here? What can we do? How can we make a difference?

I want to make a difference. Around the corner from my house is a shopping center. Almost every day I see at least one person standing by the street with a sign asking for help. I have never stopped and asked what they need or even looked too closely at them. It’s almost like I’m afraid it will rub off. I don’t have a lot of money to fix the problem but I haven’t even treated these people like human beings, smiling at them or even acknowledging their presence. And yet what must it take for them to stand there with a sign asking for help?

Often I hear people say, well why don’t they get a job? Did they ask those people to hear the reason they don’t have one? I haven’t. We all make assumptions about why they aren’t working, and yet I know, for instance, even with a diploma, Radio Shack won’t hire them. Why do I assume they are qualified for anything based on that attitude?

We have taken the ability to exist with head held high away from our people. We have gotten so caught up in judging others that we fail to ask questions or even see what the real problems are.

In so many ways we have stopped being humane. We judge others for what they have, for what they don’t have, for how they dress or how they walk. Why in the world do we do this? If a person walks any way not considered normal why would we be critical? Is it their fault? Is there a physical reason? We have stopped asking why and simply assessed them as lesser individuals. We no longer allow for differences despite the fact that we all have them. Who taught us to be so arrogant?

I watched a show and saw a man take off his shoes to give them to someone who was in desperate need. He didn’t even think twice about it, he simply did it. When was the last time you saw someone with a need and did something about it? Maybe it isn’t your fault that person needed something, but shouldn’t it be up to all of us to see that our people have what they need?

Today when I go out to run errands if I see someone on the street I will acknowledge them. I owe them at least that much. What will you do?