I found myself as an observer again last night. I was in the role of taking a close friend to see her close friend, whose son died of an apparent accidental drug overdose yesterday morning.
The scene was one of great desperation and desolation. The mother and her three sons were left to their own means by a father who decided he wanted a different life. His comment upon making a guest appearance at the house of mourning was that he could not be expected to help pay for the funeral as he had just taken on a large mortgage and house and didn't have any "free cash." He then stated he was too upset by "this poverty" to stay any longer and had his current wife help him out to the BMW.
I would love to say these sort of scenes are rare aberrations, but they are more common than I am comfortable with. The contempt that the "successful" have for those that struggle in life is one of the things that threatens to unhinge my efforts at staving off anger. In working with teenaged girls, I've found it to be just as common within families as it is in the greater context of our society. The more one has, the more threatened they tend to feel by those who could use their help in getting over the next hill that has risen up in front of them on their path in life. This makes me enormously sad.
It reminds me of when I worked as an assistant to a lawyer. Construction on a neighboring building has displaced the bus stop and left those using the stop standing just below the large picture window in the lawyer's air conditioned office. He was sitting at his desk asking me to type up some documents for him when he looked down and said, "Look at all those lazy, shiftless bastards." A year later I was riding the buses with those lazy, shiftless bastards who tend to get up at four in the morning to be at work by seven and then work well into the night, cooking, cleaning, and doing all manner of menial labor just to be able to afford a place to live and put food on their table. Oh, and the lawyer punctuated his statement with, "I can't work with them out there. I'm gonna go play some golf."
At one point I was given a fairly clear direction. I could either join the judges in their air conditioned offices or hang with the bus people. I chose the bus people and will every time. If I was stranded with nowhere to go and I had to rely on someone for help...
This week I will be moving again. For a while I may be at least partly homeless, but situations have come to light that may keep that from happening. For some reason, whenever I face difficulty in life, dozens rise up to offer me what they can. Everyone needs that. So few ever really get it.
Help someone out today by giving them what you can to lighten their load. If your burden is heavy, may someone find you and bring you what you need to make it to the next mile marker on the road through samsara.