Poverty

Being poor isn’t a moral failing. Acting poor isn’t either.
It is easy to judge, when I spend money on vices like beer or soda or cigarettes, but when you live a life without extravagance, a cold one on a hot day, or the single glow of red ember on a coffee break, seems like a lifeline.
When you have to pay to cash checks at Walmart because your credit score prevents you from having a bank account, conveniences like free checking and frequent flier miles are bonuses reserved for some part of the middle class higher up the middle than you. It feels like basic survival is higher up the ladder than can be achieved from rock bottom.
Being poor dictates irrational behavior. When you’re living on minimum wage with a hundred grand in medical bills, worrying about credit scores is a joke. Making budgets that cover every bill is impossible. The choice isn’t to pay or not to pay. The choice is to pay or eat, pay or buy medicine, pay or give your children shoes. It doesn’t matter how many credit points a ten dollar monthly payment is worth when there are no foodstuffs in the pantry or freezer. Being poor means we whittle away our wealth at check into cash scams and pawn shops.
Yes, we buy dollar store nail polish and earrings, yes, we buy boxed hair dye and cheap clothes trying to keep up with the Joneses. But we don’t buy them to spoil ourselves. We buy them so we don’t embarrass our kids on PTA night, so we have a fighting chance at a better job, so we don’t have to hide our hands in the grocery line.
We don’t go to Black Friday sales or Small Business Saturday events. No matter how much you discount it, we still can’t afford it. Instead we shuffle in with hung heads and sign up with hopeful and shamed hearts for adopt a family programs and community holiday meals.
We don’t deck the halls, we scrimp for a Christmas tree. We don’t make four course Thanksgiving meals, we stand guard, at work, selling forgotten whipped cream and marshmallows and chocolate and soda and wine and gas to people who have the luxury of holiday.
It’s easy to judge, from the heated seat of an Escalade, or a McMansion on a hill, or a benefited job with opportunity for advancement. It’s easy to say that somebody who is poor is somebody who screwed up.
What takes character is admitting that being poor is much more a matter of fate and luck than poor choices or lapses in morality. It takes character to have everything… including gratitude.
It takes character to recognize and respect those who work day after tireless day knowing that tomorrow, and the next, will be as broken and difficult and scary and lonely as the rest.
It takes character to remember that riches don’t bring righteousness. Poverty doesn’t represent failure.
I think maybe, it is easier to believe poor people did something to deserve poverty because that enforces the belief that the correct behavior will begat wealth instead of acknowledging that even the most honorable efforts, even the most well laid plans, can fall through. The bottom can always fall out and it is scary to admit that no matter how high your horse, the damn thing can still lose its footing.