I was talking to a co-worker this morning about stuff; you know morning chit-chat. The conversation drifted around topics and somehow ended up on alcohol (drinkers) and drugs. I am happy that my Beau is not a drinker (my ex was a professional) and now that I don�t drink at all I am not all that tolerant of drinkers. She commented on a family member who was dying of drink and drugs after a life spent in gangs and prisons. He was back on drugs and she said she doesn�t feel sorry for him because he is a �bad man�.

I tried to explain to her (why do I always feel the need to explain?) that people rarely consciously make the choice to become the people we see later on in life. As children many young boys, especially those in single parent homes under the pressure of crushing poverty, see the gangs and drug dealers as the only people in their lives and from their neighborhood who have nice things.

They watch their mothers go off to jobs and work hard all day (sometimes holding down two jobs) to not earn enough to provide the simple necessities let alone nice things. Boys are left out on their own, unprotected (prey) during the hours between when school lets out and when their mothers get home from work. In that time they can be convinced that they don�t have to do anything �bad�, they can earn lots of money just dropping stuff off. They can help their mothers, they can buy nice stuff, and it�s not forever it�s just for a little while.

Once the hook is in it�s hard to pull it out. They begin sliding down a slippery slope and often find themselves in too deep before they know it. Inch by inch they become the creatures you see in prisons, in morgues, on cops. They are their mother�s babies and they are astray. I know that they had choices and they made bad ones but who am I to judge? What they did was wrong but they usually felt they had no choice. They were children when they began, they blinked their eyes and they were in prison, dying or dead.

Like the folks who sell the demon weed (and I�m not talking about pot I�m speaking of the legal drug, tobacco) the drug cartels understand that you must get the children for if you wait for them to grow up they will realize the path that you are luring them to is one of death and destruction.

So I have compassion, for the addict, the dealer, the killer and the bum, they all share something in common, little choices one by one that lead to really big consequences.

The only road to material success that is available to most of the world is education (expensive and often unattainable intellectually), sports (requiring supreme athletic skill), entertainment (requiring talent, looks, incredible luck and persistence) and criminal activity. For the 99% of us who were not lucky enough to have been born rich, there aren�t any real options. You must resign yourself to working hard every day of your life and never having a lot to show for it. If you are very lucky you will meet your basic needs.

You will grind away your life trying to the right thing and you will watch the privileged parade around their excess and complain about how hard their lives are. They will self destruct and you will think to yourselves if you were in their place you would do better but like the child at the beginning of this story there is a child at the end.

He is a boy of privilege born, perhaps, to an absent and distant family. Raised by strangers, fed material goods lieu of love and told that he should feel lucky for it. This boy has so much but he is not happy and so he tries desperately to fill the hole inside. Worse than the boy who has nothing, in some ways, because at least the poor boy is allowed to feel misery, almost expected to, but the rich boy should be happy so his pain is dismissed, discounted, and he is made to feel ungrateful.

I guess the bottom line for me is life is hard and no one has the answers. We all stumble through life and I feel compassion for everyone no matter what they have done because I know that all of them were once a fragile child thrust into this cold world with no idea of what to do or how to do it. They learned from their guardians and the world around them and they made choices and mistakes only to one day look back and wonder uselessly how they could have done things different, changed the outcome for themselves and the ones they love.

If they are very lucky they will realize that no amount of stuff can fill the hole and everyone is suffering their own agony. If they are lucky enough to see past their own suffering and feel their neighbor�s pain then perhaps they will find in themselves compassion for the world. I feel in me always the child that still sees the worlds as hostile and foreboding and I wouldn�t be surprised if the rest of the people in this world feel the same.

I�ve spent a large part of my life trying on other people's shoes and I have to say that they all seem to hold their own pain.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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