Because I am Poor
The sea gypsies go to the city to beg for money, food and what have you. But I apologize for being a complete snob to these people. I know life must not be easy for them but so it is for anybody else. Poverty is not only the product of defective governance and atrocious government officials but it is also the result of people's behavior/mentality. The people are wretched not because of their country but the country is, because of its dwellers. The country's fate is in the hands of its citizens and not the other way around.
They say that the poor are discriminated. Yes, discrimination happens almost all the time despite of legal equality but this does not only occur to those who are having a hand-to-mouth existence but it is experienced by affluent individuals. When a rich person walks at the narrow lane of the squatters, people stare at him/her with envy or hatred - as if it is a SIN to be rich and that the person does not deserve the kind of life s/he has. Are those stares even justified? Who are robbed? Who are often victimized and being asked for ransom? And because they are filthy rich that is their destiny? And that poverty becomes an excuse to murder someone? to be immoral?
I wish to understand the notion that a person deserves to win because s/he is poor. I remember watching reality shows wherein those who become champions are the ones who suffered so much in life because they are poor. In my opinion they do not deserve the title. They did not win because they are better but because they are being pitied. That an individual who has the right to claim the reward is void of doing so because s/he is gifted enough and blessed with material things. Can anyone call it justice?
It is sad that one should accept this kind of reality. Winning out of pity is not something to celebrate. When can a person learn to stand up on its own when others seem to shoulder that person's responsibility? That this person should reason out that s/he deserves something not because s/he works hard for it but because s/he is poor. That the gauge of sympathy is wealth and it goes to someone who is having scarcity. How will they get up from that pit? Through other's help? Maybe they could get up because someone else is good enough to offer help. But I am certain that no matter how many help they get they are doomed to wallow and fail because they never had the backbone to stand up on their own.
I am not an elitist but I hate it that people make excuses saying they are poor when in truth they really do not have a backbone to help themselves.
