Something Needs to Change.

When you see someone suffering, and know there's not a thing you can do to help them, it hurts.
When you see how hard someone works, and know they'll never make it to where you started, it hurts.
When you know you can get out and move on, but your fellows can't, it hurts.
When you know that what you have is luck, and nothing more, it hurts.

It's one thing when I see stories in the media about those affected by poverty, natural disaster, famine, and illness. There is this fantastic wall--a bubble wall that surrounds and protects me. Yes, I feel sorry for the people I read about or see on television. I hope that someone, somewhere helps them and they move on and prosper. But I can just flick off the TV or snap shut the newspaper, and their problems are gone, shut out by the wall of my own reality--a reality constructed within the confines of the blessings and luck I was born into, that I had nothing to do with. I don't have to dwell on the suffering.

And then I meet people in my own area. People I have daily interactions with. And I see their struggles; lower-class American poverty. Forty, fifty, sixty years old and just barely paying the bills each month. Or maybe not paying the bills each month. Very sick, but unable to afford the luxury of a doctor. I see that it's a cycle. These people are no less deserving than me. No worse or lesser in any way. Better in some. But they were unlucky. Their parents worked two, three jobs to pay the bills (or not). They do the same. College wasn't an option. No one cared enough to help them along. And their kids will follow suit. Innocent kids, no better or worse than me, just born into lesser circumstances.

And I see very little I can do. How do I, we, break the cycle? It's depressing to me. The people with power have more important things to worry about: making sure they get their raises and the companies who got them into office are able to push their agendas through. Where is the humanity? The compassion?

Are we really that selfish? It hurts to realize that yes, we are.

Yes, I am.