I’ve lived long enough to have learned that not everything we see is always what we think it is. A discussion is taking place regarding people on welfare and the abuse they believe is ramped in the system. I am not so naive to believe that there is never any abuse, but when I read postings and hear people talk about how bad it is, I can only believe they have never walked the walk of having to take that step and apply for help. I read a story in the Washington Post a while ago, from a women who wrote a personal essay about how she felt driving to the welfare office in her Mercedes. Here is a link to the NPR story done on her essay. http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=330680161&m=330940188
There are so many times in the course of any day, when I hear or read people slam someone for an issue they are outraged about, and I get concerned because we are all so anxious to jump to a conclusion, that we don’t take time to understand the whole story, just like in the case of Darlena Cunha, who found themselves in a position of having much to having lost it, and then needing help. My husband and I found ourselves in such a position when we were a young family, with only him working and me being a homemaker and caring for our four children, when he was laid off from his job at Merck. We found we needed a bridge of help until he could get back into the plant, so I went down to the county and applied for food stamps.
I found myself, feeling embarrassed and it was especially hard for me to go to the store and spend the food stamps we received because I felt like all eyes were upon me. It is not easy to do this. Like the Cunha family, we were fortunate and only ever had to do it one time and went on with life once my husband returned to work. But I can still feel how I felt when I sat across the desk from the social worker, who was abrupt and curt and non sympathetic to our plight. But having four children to feed, and money running out, we needed help, even if it was just for a short while.
In today’s world where men and woman can have a good paying job one day, and lose it the next, we can all find ourselves at the threshold of a welfare office. If we show up dressed in clothes we bought and paid for when we had a job, with an expensive car (that also could be paid for) but out of work, out of money and out of food with a family to feed, does that make a person less qualified for receiving help? From some of the conversations I see one would think that. I don’t. I have known people who have worked hard and lost that six figure job and have had to eat humble pie in order to move on in life. I watched close friends of mine struggle to adjust from having making a great salary to making less than 30,000 a year. It was devastating, humiliating and depressing for them as they went through the long adjustment to a new standard of living. It took time, but imagine how much harder it was because of all the incriminating finger pointing that was done along the way because they still had “toys” from when they had a high paying job.
I am not sure why we are so hard on those in need. Are we afraid that it could be us? Do we fear that poverty will spread? I don’t know, I am only speculating. The only thing I do know is this. At my age, I have learned to be slow to judge. Slow to condemn. Slow to slam someone or something because it does not fit in my view of my world.
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