Let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
It's almost midnight and I've already blogged today, whimpering about my IRA savings of the past 25 years now dwindled down to half. I don't have another 25 years to save it up again. But then, the truth is that I took the easy way and didn't pay attention, I was haphazard and fatalistic and ignored my own better judgment.
Much of my life, I considered myself at best as suffering from scarcity, at worst impoverished. I spent a portion of my life, when my son was small and his father was contributing nothing, living on the dole. I didn't avail myself of enough education to become professional, and probably didn't deserve it, but I got a break and managed to own two newspapers, which allowed me to do for the most part the kind of work I enjoyed: writing, photographing, interviewing. I never had to wait tables, clean houses or live on rice and beans. I can probably attribute that stroke of luck to my stubborn childhood habit of reading everything I could get my hands on.
Now I live in Mexico, a country that is just beginning to take decent care of its poor. I see here among the middle class the same attitude I've seen in the states: a fear of the impoverished, and a distrust of those who have nothing. The belief that the indigent ask for their condition has been handed down for generations, and the popular notion that we create our own breaks is nothing new. As long as we think that way, we can look the other way when we see someone who needs help. We can despise the kid trying too aggressively to wash our windshield at the stoplight, and shake our heads in disgust at the teenage girl with a baby, and walk right by the Indian woman sitting on the sidewalk begging. This belief is the barrier that keeps us from lapsing into bleeding heart liberalism. At Christmas we can come up with some canned goods and a toy for the tots, and feel we've done our part for another year. The problem is too overwhelming anyway, we tell ourselves.
Not all of us want to understand poverty or attempt to do anything about it. Many will find their passions in fashion and beauty, in sports and celebrities. But for those who have found these pursuits unfulfilling, I recommend an extended period in a Third World country getting to know people who have concerns other than what's hot and what's not. More than a year, because it will take most of us at least a year to get up the courage to venture past our safe American enclaves. I'm just beginning to do that, and I've been here almost three years. I don't like this cowardly aspect of myself, and my greatest hope is that I can overcome it. After all, the way things are going, I may die penniless myself.
Living in the Promised Land, Willie Nelson
It's Blog Action Day and the subject is poverty. Here's a list of resources for anyone who'd like to learn more about what's being done, and how we can get past that feeling of being overwhelmed, grasp some part of this unwieldy problem and help fix it.