Effortless Effervescence

In the past few days, I’ve seen the following status update posted by a few of my Facebook friends:

America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. If you feel the same, copy and repost this.

My initial response was, “Amen! Isn’t it a shame that it takes a huge disaster in another country (or in the case of Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, another state) to mobilize Americans to help their fellow man? Why aren’t we doing more every single day?” But then I began thinking (my husband would say OVER-thinking) this issue of international generosity and how it relates to the problems in our own backyard, and I got a little worked up.

Yes, America is a hot mess, but I don’t think it’s because we’re so damn busy making life easier for everyone else on the planet. I think the problem is that we’re painfully stingy with our fellow citizens, often because we feel that they “deserve” the misfortune they’re experiencing. Most of us don’t agree with Pat Robertson’s they-made-a-pact-with-the-devil theory, and in our minds, the folks in Haiti were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and we should help them because they didn’t do anything to bring this on themselves. The less fortunate in America, though, are just suffering the consequences of their own stupidity, so why should we feel obligated to help them?

For instance, the hungry and homeless should just get a damn job already! They shouldn’t have been so stupid with their money. They should have saved more, and spent less on frivolous things. (You know, the same things we tell ourselves we deserve to have because we work so hard for OUR money.) They shouldn’t be too proud to ask family or friends for help, and shame on those friends and family for not having their doors open wide. Never mind that some of us would rather see our siblings sleep on the floor at the Union Mission before asking them into our home; our family situations are different, of course. And our house is much too small to open up to a friend in need! Our bank accounts are stretched too thin as it is putting food on our own table, so when the annual food bank drive gears up at our workplace, we donate the dented cans and expired boxes from the back of our pantries instead of buying a few things from the store that we’d actually consider giving our own children. We are careful not to make eye contact with the homeless man who hangs out at the supermarket around the corner, or better yet, we ask the police officer who lives down the street to do something about him, because he freaks our kids out. We protect and insulate ourselves from the very things we think someone should do something about, because we assume that “someone” can’t possibly be us.

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that they’re tired of working hard so that their tax dollars could support some lazy good-for-nothing (because, after all, every person on welfare, unemployment or disability is actually a con artist working the system for a fixed income that’s well below poverty level), I would have… well, a lot of nickels. I am not saying that there isn’t such a thing as fraud, or that our government doesn’t need to reform many of our social assistance programs, or that I am exempt from the line of thinking I’ve described in this post. I’ve used the pronoun “we” because I’m guilty of this peculiar stinginess myself, of thinking that what separates me from those less fortunate than I is shrewdness, a good work ethic, or personal sacrifice. In reality, the only thing that makes me different from a woman sleeping in her car tonight is blind luck. Rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous, after all.

So yes, it is a shame that people in our country suffer every day, that they’re not getting the help they need. So what are we going to do about it, America?

What are you going to do about it, Emily?