In the process of cleaning out my blog and found this draft that was supposed to have be published on October 18, in support of Blog Action Day. Better late than never, when the topic is this important.
This entry is being written in honor of Blog Action Day 2008 and is one of nearly 10,000 blogs participating with more than 10,000,000 readers.
“Seeing so much poverty everywhere makes me think that God is not rich. He gives the appearance of it, but I suspect some financial difficulties.” [Victor Hugo, "Les Misérables," 1862]
But what is poverty?
Dictionary.com defines poverty as:
- The state or condition of having little or no money, good, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence.
- Deficiency of neccessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc.: poverty of the soul.
- Scantiness; insufficiency: There efforts to stamp out disease were hampered by a poverty of medical supplies.
This is where my draft ended, because I wasn’t sure where to go with it.
However, is there a definition that can truely share what poverty is?
- Can you put a definition on a child that cuts the end off his shoes because the family doesn’t have the money to purchase more?
- Can you put a definition on a family that is living in a home that isn’t fit for swine, but finds it as an improvement because they are out of the car?
Poverty has so many faces, and as the economy continues to soften it is no doubt that more will come. I can mentally “shrug off” adults that are facing poverty, but why. Does the fact that a person is over 18 make it any more pallatable that they are homeless or facing poverty on a daily basis. Partially, yes.
“These people are old enough to fend for themselves,” I keep telling myself. But how many of them are living outside the system because of medical issues? How many of these were failed by society as a child?
Before I got into real estate it was too easy to ignore the issues. But now I see them too often, and it really scares me.
So take a second, and remember that poverty doesn’t happen in cities far away it happens right under our nose.
Photo by Leroy Skalstad, used with permission
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