Not Out Of Touch!

This article is in response to a friends’ article on his blog (not going to post the link for personal reasons).

The up-shot of his article is that he recently visited a friend in the mid-West who is in a very dire situation financially. A common story these days: Divorced, child support, lost good job, living in small rental apartment with roommate, gave up car etc. All too common in America these days.

By contrast MasterPo’s friend feels he is in a much better position financially and doesn’t worry (right or wrong) about such things. Not being married and having no kids helps the situation (a sad commentary too on America!). But he feels he has lost some prospective on the national environment. He claims he too was in that similar situation some years ago and through a lot of time, hard work and risk made himself better off.

In MasterPo’s opinion this guy has nothing to feel “out of touch” or more likely guilty about!

Different people live different lives. We all make decisions that lead to different results. Sometimes we think we know the outcomes of our decisions and other times we don’t have a clue where it will lead. MasterPo isn’t going to second guess the life decisions of MasterPo’s friend or the friend’s friend. But whatever those decisions were it lead to where they are today:

Plus a dose of the X Factor: The unknown often uncontrollable events in life that we have know idea will happen nor any real ability to change or prevent them from happening (example: could anyone reading this have truly known for a fact terrorists would strike on 9/11? Even if you felt it was possible what could you personally have done to stop it?).

It’s human compassion to feel compassion for someone in a bad position. And it’s normal to pause and consider: By the grace of G-d go thee.

But there is no need to feel out of touch. Either by hard work or circumstance or just good luck you didn’t end up in a similar position (at least not yet, things tend to run in cycles). It speaks well that you have empathy for someone’s plight and self reflection to recognize you too could easily be in the same circumstances. But just because he is in a bad place and you aren’t does not make you “out of touch”.

Just don’t say “Let them eat cake”.