I was going to write an inspirational blog but instead let's talk about poverty and depression.

Originally, I was going to blog about all the cool books and stuff I got on super clearance at Barnes & Noble with pictures and images of all the neat stuff.

But I asked my roommate's opinion on if it was too boring and he replied "Honestly... everyone goes out and buys cool stuff every day." So, I sat and thought about what else I had to say. And then I realized what is more meaningful than me buying random fun things from Barnes & Noble is the fact that, right now, I can buy neat stuff at Barnes & Noble, clearance or not when a few years ago I was shoplifting food from a store, sleeping on a friend's couch, and waiting for my food stamps to be approved.

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store and spent $200 on food and came home having extreme anxiety because I am so used to not being able to spend $200 even if it is on something I need. I also spent $70 on clothes that I desperately needed. Then I checked my bank account to realize I have rent covered 3 weeks in advance plus $500 more dollars. This is completely new to me. I just spent $800 on a move across country, $600 on furnishing my new room, and then was able to still buy groceries and fun stuff?

Thinking about how much different life is at this moment made me realize how much of my life previously revolved around trying to survive, as well as coping with some heavy blows in the tragedy department. I didn't have much time to dedicate to other things, let alone to dedicate to finding my happiness. Becoming happy when you have lived with a lot of struggling, tragedies, and obstacles is not easy or fast. You don't just "decide" to be happy and it's done, especially when you have acute anxiety, severe depression, and PTSD but it's even harder when all of your time is spent worrying about money, how to shelter yourself from the elements, how to eat enough food to stay alive and so on.

I have heard people say that depression is a first-world problem. The fact that people who are living in extreme conditions don't talk about depression doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it. It just means they don't have the time to think about or talk about depression. Their life is consumed by struggling and trying to stay alive.

(Hey look, a bench without bars to prevent laying on it or spikes underneath it! Yippee. But you can probably still be arrested for sleeping on it.)

It has become a privilege to be able to find happiness. Because to do so you not only need stability (food, home, transportation) but possibly therapy, and maybe even medication, all of which is something impoverished people can't afford and, often times, don't even think about needing.

This originally started as a motivational blog but as I started writing it...

I realized there isn't much you can do/say to a person living in extreme poverty that will make them happier and me even trying to would be condescending considering I know from experience that yoga and meditation and a "can-do" attitude are going to do jack-shit for a person who is thinking about stealing their dinner from the grocery store and where they are going to sleep that night, or even a person who has dinner and a place to sleep but works 60 hours a week at a really shitty job and has no time for anything else. I mentioned "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" in my last blog and I want to talk a little bit about that.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review.[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belongingness" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.

That is the definition of Maslow's hierarchy of needs from wikipedia. Now, notice that the bottom of the pyramid is full of things that impoverished people either don't have or have barely enough of to survive. It is safety, stability, food, shelter. The basics. And the top of the pyramid contains a lot of stuff that is key to finding happiness, creativity, intimacy, friendship, self-esteem. A lot of the things at the top of the pyramid, however, can't easily be achieved without first taking care of the bottom half of the pyramid. This is an easy way to explain why it is hard for somebody struggling financially to find happiness.

I have also read many stories about poor people who are much happier than rich people because they are less interested in unfulfilling things like status symbols and material objects and are sometimes more appreciative of the smaller things. I am not saying no poor people are happy or that every poor person is incredibly depressed. (I am also not saying all rich people are materialistic, shallow jerks.) I am just saying for poor people who are depressed/sad/struggling to survive it is much harder for them to find happiness than it is for someone with no financial worries who can spend time focusing on eating "clean", doing yoga, meditating, or leisurely riding a bike.

I am not sure of what I want to end this post on, obviously it isn't going to be something inspirational, that ship sailed when I realized that money was an integral part of me starting to find happiness and I didn't even touch base on many other points such as the incredible cost of healthcare in this country which is key to taking car of that bottom part of Maslow's pyramid. So, I guess I am just saying to try and be more empathetic in how you view people who are struggling and try to admit that if you have a home, food, and even a few hundred dollars in your bank account you are living better than a very large percentage of the world.

Sorry that this wasn't an inspirational blog but, I can say, if you have a home and food on your table start trying to take care of the top half of that pyramid and maybe, sometimes, try to help a person who is struggling with that bottom bit.

Photos:
Homeless man:
https://pixabay.com/en/homeless-man-b-w-poverty-male-845752/

Sleeping on bench:
https://pixabay.com/p-1045137/?no_redirect

Maslow's hierarchy of needs - wikimedia commons

Quote:
http://quotesgram.com/in-to-kill-a-mockingbird-empathy-quotes/