A poverty of spirit

A recent story highlighted the plight of a mother with four children who is in dire straits because she has been forced to leave the condemned house she was living in and is now residing in the three rooms of a warehouse, with no sanitary facilities. 

In the midst of this stark poverty, her greatest wish is to be able to afford to take her family on a modest day trip to Gozo. In an effort to help her, the anti-poverty lobby, Alleanza kontra l-Faqar, has called on the public for donations in order to collect enough money to grant her wish and to perhaps buy the family some groceries. 

It is the type of story, which contrasts sharply and bizarrely with other stories of luxurious high-rises and people eager to splash out on the latest trend such as dining in the sky. 

Here we are being presented with the other side of the coin, which could not be more different from the portrait of an affluent country where the majority of families seem to be spending money like there’s no tomorrow, with restaurants and cafes permanently packed with diners and new supermarkets opening their doors to a wave of eager shoppers.

As this women pleads with the authorities to be given social housing because she cannot afford to rent (according to the Illum report, three Ministers are aware of her situation), she is a stark reminder to all of us that our destiny in life is often a fluke and that those teetering on the brink of poverty may as well be living in another country altogether, so vastly different is their lifestyle to ours. 

And yet, not everyone views a story likes this in quite in the same way. Predictably and inevitably, there were those who zeroed in on her number of children, the assumption that she is a single mother with all the connotations that brings, while asking outright why she doesn’t go out to work to support herself and her children.

It’s bad enough that Facebook has become like one big 'look at me, how fabulous I am' ego-trip Josanne Cassar

Others flatly stated that going to Gozo was a frivolous request considering the woman’s circumstances.

There were also several references to “God helps those who help themselves”. Now while I happen to agree with this saying I also find that it is also extremely unfair to make all sorts of snap judgements without knowing the full details of a case. 

What I did notice was that, in so many of the comments, what came across was a certain callousness and poverty of a different kind: a poverty of spirit. Too many seem to have lost their ability for empathy and compassion. 

It is true that the woman may have brought certain things upon herself through her choices (then again, don’t we all?), but I wonder if that is really any justification to be so uncaring and cold towards her predicament, especially with children involved?

There were several comments posted by women who remarked how they too had had to support children by themselves and yet had managed to do so without restoring to this type of “begging”. 

This is the type of online comment that I find particularly uncharitable because it does not take into account any unknown mitigating factors, nor does it take into consideration that, ultimately, we are all different. 

Take any two people and the way they handle adversity and you are bound to find discrepancies which have everything to do with the substance of one’s character: one may refuse to bow down and will struggle fiercely to overcome a situation, while another may fall apart at the seams and will be unable to cope.

I’ve noticed this before with online commentary: that instead of answering a call for help or at least show some sympathy, so many are quick to rush in with accounts of their own life stories as if to say, “my problem was much worse than yours”, for all the world as if this was some kind of contest. 

Have we really become so self-observed and narcissistic that we cannot even try and imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes for a nano second, because the story always has to be about “us”? 

It’s bad enough that Facebook has become like one big “look at me, how fabulous I am” ego-trip, but when we cannot even step outside ourselves for a few minutes to spare a thought for those who are really struggling, than we really need to question what we have become.

The reactions to this story have revealed the constantly widening gap which exists between the have and the have-nots, with the former unwilling or even unable to comprehend that such a concept as poverty exists in our country.

How can it be, they will demand to know, as they speak scathingly of those who are on a low income as parasites and good for nothings who expect state hand-outs at every turn.

While social welfare scroungers do exist, so do those who are genuinely poor and who deserve financial aid. I wonder, sometimes, about those who are so comfortably off that poverty never comes within their radar, and how they have managed to go through life without coming up close to what it means to scrimp and save just to get by. 

Maybe it is time they realized that life does not treat everyone fairly and justly and that some have had to carry more than their share of burdens. 

Sometimes it only takes an illness, the loss of a job or even the break up of a marriage to tip the scales and cast a person into the “poverty” category. 

It can happen, it has happened to so many.

As that other saying goes, “there but for the grace of God, go I”.