Reflection Post
What does “poor” look like?
As a white male from a middle-class family, I can say with absolute conviction that I am privileged. By privileged, I do not mean to say that accomplishing what I have thus far in my life has been easy. I mean that I have faced far fewer obstacles that prevent me from realizing my dreams, goals, and aspirations. I grew up on a rural/suburban area, attended a small high school, earned good grades, and was supported by a loving family.
I had seen the “poor” before, and attending a rural school district meant that there was no shortage of people who didn’t have money. When I enrolled at University of Cincinnati, however, I was faced with a harsh reality: I had never in my life truly seen what “poor” looked like. I had friends whose clothes might be hand-me-downs and/or a little worn, whose parents couldn’t afford to buy them a new car for their 16th birthday, or who had to enroll in the free and reduced lunch program at school. But I had never, ever seen what it means to be truly poor, to be surrounded by obstacles that feed a vicious cycle of poverty.
The adjustment did not come to me easily. I was, to be honest, terrified at first to be surrounded by such imagery. I threw up shields, blinding myself to the awful truths that bombarded me, that threatened my content, happy, safe outlook on the world. Fortunately, very early on in my undergraduate career I joined a campus organization called GlobeMed. GlobeMed is a network of students that work toward global health equity and confront issues of social justice. There, I met and worked with a very diverse group of students from all backgrounds. There, I learned how to lower my shields, to reach out and work across boundaries that had previously seemed too strong, too wide, too insurmountable.
After a year of this experience, I decided it was time to do more. I applied to the Crossroad Volunteer Internship Program, nervous and unsure but still holding close my conviction that this experience would change me for the better. On that score, I was undeniably correct. Before I even started my first shift, we were talking about things like social determinants of health, poverty, underserved populations, obstacles to optimal health, and well-being.
My first shift crushed me. Immediately, I was seeing patients rattled with despair and hopelessness. Patients, PEOPLE, who wanted answers and who wanted to be healthy, to feel good. People, human beings, who sometimes lived in conditions in which I wouldn’t allow an animal to live. My heart broke, and I lost hope that anyone could do anything to help these people. And then I realized that, despite what I was seeing and how I felt about it, I had never lived it. These people lived with it daily, some of them perhaps for decades. How must they feel, to be tossed down again and again and again?
This realization created a depth to my experience, subtly changing how I looked at our patient population and how I interacted with them. Over time, I understood their lives through their eyes. They had triumphs and victories aplenty, and they had joy as well as sorrow. They were, in many aspects, very much like me. So what was different? It took me weeks of really deeply considering this question to come up with an answer I felt was right.
Fundamentally, these people are the same as you and me. They are human beings with minds, hopes, dreams, families, and struggles. What is different about them is a far-reaching societal barricade that has walled them into a defined category, a category that is difficult to ever escape. They have become trapped in a vicious cycle, a swift current that lets them take only momentary, hasty gulps of air before it pulls them back under to bash them against rocks.
They want to see a doctor, but that requires insurance. Healthcare is expensive. Insurance can be expensive, especially if they don’t work. They would love to work, to have a career, but they perhaps didn’t receive the right kind of education or training for this. They may be too sick to work. But to get healthy, they need healthcare, which they can’t afford because they don’t work and so they don’t have insurance. Do you see the pattern?
It gets even more complicated. What if they do work? What if they do have insurance? Well, do they have a car? Can they afford to take the metro? Do they have to choose between reliable transportation and buying food? Is it safe for them to walk from their home to the clinic? Are they physically able to make the trek? Do they have family that can help them get to and from appointments? Can they afford to take time off from work to see a doctor, which might incur further expenses?
And what about living conditions? Assuming they do have a home, is it healthy? Is it a small family living in an apartment perhaps? Or is it an extended family sleeping three or more to a room, or even to a bed? The children need more exercise. Is it safe for them to be outside without strict supervision? Do they have the resources at home to complete homework and study effectively so that they can excel in school?
There are a dozen more scenarios I could list, and every one of them presents dozens of barriers. Imagine facing down just one of these on your own for a moment.
Now imagine facing down all of them at once.
Do you understand now? This is what “poor” is. It’s more than just not having money. It’s more than not having a job. It’s trying to climb over the barrier and being shoved back down behind it. It’s being deprived of the basic element of humanity, being stripped down to a thing, an object, that can be ignored as if it were invisible. It is struggling every moment to make it through to the next moment. But it is not being weak.
In working with these individuals, people who face poverty every day of their lives, I never once saw someone who was weak. They have spirits of iron and steel, despite the daily struggle. They endure situations that would shatter me. They have faith, faith that it could always be worse and they should therefore be thankful for what they already have. Within each and every one of them burns a spark, a spark that refuses to be put out by anyone or anything. It is this spark, above all, that makes them worth every effort we can make. It is this spark that poverty tries to destroy, and we must not let it.
We must kindle that spark, until it becomes an inferno that cannot be stopped.
As a white male from a middle-class family, I can say with absolute conviction that I am privileged. By privileged, I do not mean to say that accomplishing what I have thus far in my life has been easy. I mean that I have faced far fewer obstacles that prevent me from realizing my dreams, goals, and aspirations. I grew up on a rural/suburban area, attended a small high school, earned good grades, and was supported by a loving family.
I had seen the “poor” before, and attending a rural school district meant that there was no shortage of people who didn’t have money. When I enrolled at University of Cincinnati, however, I was faced with a harsh reality: I had never in my life truly seen what “poor” looked like. I had friends whose clothes might be hand-me-downs and/or a little worn, whose parents couldn’t afford to buy them a new car for their 16th birthday, or who had to enroll in the free and reduced lunch program at school. But I had never, ever seen what it means to be truly poor, to be surrounded by obstacles that feed a vicious cycle of poverty.
The adjustment did not come to me easily. I was, to be honest, terrified at first to be surrounded by such imagery. I threw up shields, blinding myself to the awful truths that bombarded me, that threatened my content, happy, safe outlook on the world. Fortunately, very early on in my undergraduate career I joined a campus organization called GlobeMed. GlobeMed is a network of students that work toward global health equity and confront issues of social justice. There, I met and worked with a very diverse group of students from all backgrounds. There, I learned how to lower my shields, to reach out and work across boundaries that had previously seemed too strong, too wide, too insurmountable.
After a year of this experience, I decided it was time to do more. I applied to the Crossroad Volunteer Internship Program, nervous and unsure but still holding close my conviction that this experience would change me for the better. On that score, I was undeniably correct. Before I even started my first shift, we were talking about things like social determinants of health, poverty, underserved populations, obstacles to optimal health, and well-being.
My first shift crushed me. Immediately, I was seeing patients rattled with despair and hopelessness. Patients, PEOPLE, who wanted answers and who wanted to be healthy, to feel good. People, human beings, who sometimes lived in conditions in which I wouldn’t allow an animal to live. My heart broke, and I lost hope that anyone could do anything to help these people. And then I realized that, despite what I was seeing and how I felt about it, I had never lived it. These people lived with it daily, some of them perhaps for decades. How must they feel, to be tossed down again and again and again?
This realization created a depth to my experience, subtly changing how I looked at our patient population and how I interacted with them. Over time, I understood their lives through their eyes. They had triumphs and victories aplenty, and they had joy as well as sorrow. They were, in many aspects, very much like me. So what was different? It took me weeks of really deeply considering this question to come up with an answer I felt was right.
Fundamentally, these people are the same as you and me. They are human beings with minds, hopes, dreams, families, and struggles. What is different about them is a far-reaching societal barricade that has walled them into a defined category, a category that is difficult to ever escape. They have become trapped in a vicious cycle, a swift current that lets them take only momentary, hasty gulps of air before it pulls them back under to bash them against rocks.
They want to see a doctor, but that requires insurance. Healthcare is expensive. Insurance can be expensive, especially if they don’t work. They would love to work, to have a career, but they perhaps didn’t receive the right kind of education or training for this. They may be too sick to work. But to get healthy, they need healthcare, which they can’t afford because they don’t work and so they don’t have insurance. Do you see the pattern?
It gets even more complicated. What if they do work? What if they do have insurance? Well, do they have a car? Can they afford to take the metro? Do they have to choose between reliable transportation and buying food? Is it safe for them to walk from their home to the clinic? Are they physically able to make the trek? Do they have family that can help them get to and from appointments? Can they afford to take time off from work to see a doctor, which might incur further expenses?
And what about living conditions? Assuming they do have a home, is it healthy? Is it a small family living in an apartment perhaps? Or is it an extended family sleeping three or more to a room, or even to a bed? The children need more exercise. Is it safe for them to be outside without strict supervision? Do they have the resources at home to complete homework and study effectively so that they can excel in school?
There are a dozen more scenarios I could list, and every one of them presents dozens of barriers. Imagine facing down just one of these on your own for a moment.
Now imagine facing down all of them at once.
Do you understand now? This is what “poor” is. It’s more than just not having money. It’s more than not having a job. It’s trying to climb over the barrier and being shoved back down behind it. It’s being deprived of the basic element of humanity, being stripped down to a thing, an object, that can be ignored as if it were invisible. It is struggling every moment to make it through to the next moment. But it is not being weak.
In working with these individuals, people who face poverty every day of their lives, I never once saw someone who was weak. They have spirits of iron and steel, despite the daily struggle. They endure situations that would shatter me. They have faith, faith that it could always be worse and they should therefore be thankful for what they already have. Within each and every one of them burns a spark, a spark that refuses to be put out by anyone or anything. It is this spark, above all, that makes them worth every effort we can make. It is this spark that poverty tries to destroy, and we must not let it.
We must kindle that spark, until it becomes an inferno that cannot be stopped.