POVERTY: IT CAN BE CURED

Poverty, is it a disease? Is it a choice? Is it ignored? As a part of Blog Action Day, I am participating in the global discussion on poverty. I was actually excited to learn this was the topic when I signed on to this project over the summer. I have always been especially touched and have had a heart for those less fortunate than I am.

I worked with a lady once who thought that homeless people were homeless by choice. She, therefore, had no sympathy for them. I saw her view as quite tunneled. Because she had grown up not wanting or needing for much, she could not fathom that everyone was not like her. Isn't that just how it is? Don't you just pick yourself up and keep going if you face hard times? No, not always. 

There are so many factors that play into poverty and its source. Some see it as spiritual. That it is a generational curse that can be prayed away. Perhaps.  I believe it is definitely a learned behavior. A behavior that can be turned around, cured and eliminated through education. People don't have because they are not taught to have. They do what their parents did and their parents before them. 

Financial responsibility (and irresponsibility) is all around us these days. The plunging DOW. The governmental bailout of Wall Street. The mortgage crisis. None of this had to happen if people were educated. None of this had to happen if people were to do what I call 'playing the movie out'. Often, not just financially, when we imagine how things could be we only imagine up to a certain point. That point being where everything is rosy and happy and you are skipping through the dandelion fields. But, if we all learn to 'play the movie out' and really look at all the possible endings, we would all be in a much better place. If those approved for mortgages twice what they should have been approved for had stopped and taken time to think about what they were doing, they might not have foreclosed on their home. If the big guys on Wall Street had played their movie of greed out, they may have foreseen the massive stock plunges that were the norm last week.

For certain, poverty is a relative term. There is always someone below your income level who can be considered in poverty. What do you do for those people? Do you help them? Do you laugh at them? Do you throw a dollar into their cup and wave them off as you shake your head in disgust? My choice is to volunteer in shelters. My choice is to raise a son who is financially responsible in hopes that he will pass those lessons to others. My choice is to continue to educate myself so that I am better financially.

Every cure begins with one person. Individual drops in a bucket will eventually fill the bucket. And if the drops continue, the bucket will overflow. There will be more for others.

Be a drop in the bucket...