The Haves & the Have-​Nots — Which one are you? and why you should care

Unfortunately, we live in a world in which there is no end to the amount of bad things that are affect­ing peo­ple today. The rea­son I say this is because even though we live in such a tech­no­log­i­cal soci­ety in which we live for the next best gad­get and the lives of celebri­ties dom­i­nate the news aware­ness of the human con­di­tion is at an all-​time low.

I know this is not the sub­ject of my usual fare, but I often think about these things and in my per­sonal life I dis­cuss them on a reg­u­lar basis. Many peo­ple don’t want to talk about the decline of this world but it is inevitable. This topic has been the sub­ject of a few of my arti­cles. What’s spurring this on today is sev­eral times this morn­ing I have seen com­mer­cials about suf­fer­ing ani­mals. While I am not exactly an ani­mal per­son, I don’t like to see them suf­fer either but there are many more peo­ple suf­fer­ing than ani­mals that are being ignored.

I began to won­der how many peo­ple really think about the cir­cum­stances of oth­ers in this “Keeping up with the Jones” or now Kardashians soci­ety. There were mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing in poverty long before the eco­nomic cri­sis we see today. Men, women and chil­dren. I have always won­dered why here in the west­ern world we have all-​you-​can-​eat restau­rants while mil­lions go hun­gry every night. I know this is not a pop­u­lar topic. A lot of peo­ple don’t want to think about it.

It would be a lot eas­ier to think about if it was you. In fact, on my end, it has been me. I am one of those peo­ple. Raised in an envi­ron­ment where we didn’t always have what we needed, and even as an adult faced the same chal­lenge. I’m not one who is dire need like many peo­ple in this world, but I am one of the peo­ple who looks like the aver­age mid­dle class per­son but have felt what it is like to do with­out. Maybe you are too. Maybe you aren’t.

Either way, my chal­lenge to you is just for a day between the Twittering, Blackberrying, and social-​networking where we mind­lessly con­nect with peo­ple who are of sim­i­lar lifestyles as ours, let’s do some think­ing. Think about the sin­gle mother who works three jobs to pro­vide for her fam­ily. Think about the elderly cou­ple who can’t afford med­ical care and have to suf­fer silently. Think about your co-​worker, who looks just like you but is barely sur­viv­ing and fear­ing los­ing every­thing. Think about all those who don’t have but still live in a world where other people’s lux­u­ries are put on dis­play with no thought to their suf­fer­ing. Then, think about your­self and about what you have and whether or not you really appre­ci­ate it because things can change in an instant.

Thanks for read­ing,