Understanding those who "Choose" to be Poor -- Part 2

Towards the end of the stay in Nevada, I was let go from the plumbing job. I worked it long enough to learn I was a lousy plumber, although I did pick up some rudimentary plumbing skills.

After I was unemployed in Nevada, we decided it was time to get out. I turned to blogging, which I had become quite proficient at by that time. I was offered what seemed like a great offer: a house in the TX Panhandle at what seemed like a great price to someone accustomed to houses worth six figures.

Unfortunately, we were unprepared both financially and emotionally for home ownership, and that situation became worse through our own neglect.

I spent the next two years throwing newspapers. I was still unprepared to deal with people and really had little experience handling conflict. I operated on the "if you ignore it long enough, it will go away" principle. I wasn't a good neighbor, I wasn't a good friend, and I wasn't a good father or husband at the time. I was coasting

So what brought me out of it? What changed? The realization that mountains weren't going to move unless I set about moving them. The understanding that success is often the result of planning and perserverance, not of luck and lottery.

It didn't come overnight. I went back to school first with the idea of attending a web design class. The school wasn't set up for folks who wanted to take some random class, though, and I had to enroll as a student to take the course.

After I was enrolled, I was steered towards the Network Technology degree plan. I got into it, and about halfway through decided I wasn't ready to stop with my Associates. That led to my enrolling to finish up the final two years towards a Bachelors.

There was a steep learning curve those two years. To start off with, we burned a few bridges, first with the family that had been kind enough to help us with our relocation to the Panhandle. Again, the lack of ability to handle conflict came into play, and to say we handled that poorly would be an understatement. I still didn't have a firm grip on the concept of "planning" and we moved out on the spur of the moment, leaving a lot of things unfinished.

The next two years were grueling. There were a lot of weeks with no free time, and I would come home and collapse, watching movies to motivate me and help me keep going. Quitting at that point was not an option, although it did at times seem to have its appeal.

My point in telling all of this is to explain that not only do I understand some of the inner thought process of those who choose to stay poor, but I have, I think, a unique perspective of how to get out and how those truly concerned with issues of poverty can help.

First, "things" don't help as much as people think they do. We had an abundance of castoff furniture, clothing and trinkets; enough that we couldn't possibly hope to manage it. Both because we had spent substantial time in poverty and because we felt beholden to those who donated the items, we didn't throw them out, we piled them up. In moving from the one house, I discovered painfully that a room we were using for storage had been overtaken by mice (it doesn't take as long as one would think), and that was the reason we had trouble eradicating them from the rest of the house. Piling up "things" when you lack good planning skills is, in essence, a bad idea. Strike that -- it's a HORRIBLE idea.

Second, personal involvement helps a LOT, but you have to be fairly rugged to do it. I can't say that someone directly and personally involved in our lives would have helped tons, unless it was a VERY persistent person, because I'm a very stubborn one. Unlearning habits of poverty means accepting and acknowledging personal weakness, and a person who has spent a lot of time in survival mode is usually somewhat short on those skills. It takes a gradual, gentle approach at times, and a bit of a smack upside the head at others. That smack upside the head may hurt at first, but once the pain subsides, and you sit back and analyze it, you come away with a MUCH clearer understanding.

Third, money is a "sometimes" thing. Throwing money at the problem doesn't address the underlying issues; it only postpones them. But there are some problems, some situations that require a monetary solution, and that's where individual, direct investment in someone's life can help to address that. But money itself is at best a salve.

Fourth, politics is not the solution. Politicians can help, of course, by steering resources to those working to address those problems, but ultimately, problem solving requires being above politics, being beyond them.

Fifth, accountability is key. Blame helps noone, and ultimately, the only person to get out of poverty will be the person who got themselves into it in the first place. People standing on the sidelines can help, they can advise, but they can't fix it.

Sixth, it doesn't come quickly and it doesn't come easily. Getting into poverty doesn't come easy, neither does getting out. It takes involvement, investment, and hard work. You ultimately have to decide that there is no option for failure.

There are, of course, those who are poor because of circumstances entirely beyond their control. And we need a way to help them, to give them the means for their own escape from poverty. But while some may choose poverty, it is still my contention that nobody WANTS poverty; they just are not aware that there is another way.

As for me and my family, we've still got a ways to go. It's a day by day thing. But ultimately I've come to realize that we are the ones who need to make sure that if we aren't happy with our circumstances, we should set about to change them. But I also see a lot of other folks struggling, and believe that it is our mission as Christians to reach out, to be the hands and feet of Christ, and to offer them both hope and help.

Understanding Those who "Choose" to be Poor -- Part 1

As the push towards the 2012 elections continues, poverty has come to the forefront, and for good reason: more Americans than ever are on food stamps, and a good number of people (drawing not only on polls but empirical knowledge) are increasingly desperate and uncertain about their future.

One of the long held assertions of Republicans is that the poor "choose" to be poor. Like all stereotypes, there are enough people who do choose to be poor that it's easy to point in their direction and make a stereotype that fits. But there's a strong untruth that isn't revealed in this simple statement: while some people may CHOOSE to be poor, nobody WANTS to be poor.

And the difference is something that needs to be understood by our leaders, our ministers, anyone who has any desire to deal with the issues of poverty.

I'm going to draw on my personal experience here, as for a good portion of my life, I was one who chose poverty. Not a welfare lifestyle, but poverty nonetheless. For reasons I won't go into here, I eschewed higher education, and although I briefly attended college, I just as quickly left it behind, choosing hand to mouth employment in the restaurants, factories, and ultimately in homecare.

The reason was simple: from about 18-27, I didn't believe I would live past the age of 30. This wasn't just a fatalistic post-adolescent angst thing: I buried one younger brother at 16 and another at 23. And nothing in the world around me gave me hope for greater optimism. I believed I had a ticking clock, and I lived like it.

When I was 27, I made the decision to move into homecare. I decided it was time to gain a sense of purpose, a sense of working towards the long term. And I loved it at first, and put everything into it. But I burned out quickly, and I quit about 3 years after I actually should have. I went to working at WalMart briefly because I had become so overtaken by circumstances that I simply couldn't handle being around people.

Leading up to this, though, I did see what was happening, and did what I could to forestall the inevitable. At one point, I even went to my pastor trying to explain what I thought was depression (but later learned was despair -- I was overloaded, ill equipped, and worn out). He came back to me with the simple answer that he had spoken to his wife asking about depression, and she stated "I think all men suffer from it". That was it. No honest, sincere attempt to reach out, to be there...at a time when I really needed him.

Keep in mind these are not words of bitterness -- I'm beyond that. These are words to help people who wonder what leads to poverty and how they can help.

At the same time, my support system was crumbling. I had spent several years trying to rebuild a relationship with my father, only to see him becoming increasingly bitter, cynical and critical -- at a time when I needed people to help me through. I was long on problems, and short on answers.

And the bills were mounting. And having mouths to feed at home certainly didn't help.

In desperation, I did the only thing I knew how to do, an incredibly stupid decision in retrospective, but one that had a fortunately positive outcome -- I ran.

We didn't discuss it with most folks around us, just picked up and left and headed out west, ostensibly to start fresh, but with no knowledge of where we were going or what we were doing. I often liken it to Paul Theroux's protagonist in "The Mosquito Coast" -- I was trying to move forward, but was acting in desperation, not in common sense, and I had no idea where I was going.

This led us to nearly a year in the Nevada desert, where I worked a variety of jobs, from mining to laying septic in the middle of the mojave desert, to day labor. It was backbreaking work, and it was uncertain. On top of that, we hit at the peak of housing in Southern Nevada, and rents were insanely high. Add to that low wages, and our financial situation was not improving.

I'll summarize the "rest of the story" in the post following.