Just because it looks good on paper and makes us feel good

Sometimes I am positive . . . and sometimes I am not.

I don't like it when people point out how many children grow up neglected in poverty and abusive homes and became famous. It implies that they are stronger for having to face these disabilities. They may be, but would you purposely put your child in such situations to make them stronger, on the off chance that they might become an over achiever? I think not. If it is easy for you to let other children grow up this way by consoling yourself with the above thoughts, think again. For every child who becomes a brain surgeon, or rock star, or inspirational speaker, because of an awful childhood, there are probably thousands who died, or grow up to be mentally unstable. And no matter how you justify this it is simply wrong.

I also don't like it when people act like all old people are happy to sit around doing nothing and be treated like adorable incompetents. In the best of all worlds no one would go into a nursing home until they were in a coma, or unconscious in some way. Until then, everyone wants to be loved, needed, and useful, not like large stuffed animals, but as living, thinking human beings. I don't care if that means they sit and hold the babies, or guard the back yard garden from birds, there has to be a place for still living people besides Death's waiting rooms.

I also believe that most people forced to live on disability or unemployment for an extended period of time be required to volunteer at least a few hours a week. We could have buses pick them up and take them home and even provide meals if they are there all day, but there are hundreds of jobs for volunteers that could improve our children's schools and daycare facilities, our public parks and libraries and health facilities. Why not allow people to feel, and BE, useful? In our community many of these jobs are done by retired seniors, but there are enough to go around.

Not everything valuable in life should be about convenience and money.

There must be room for accommodating people with different needs and sensitivities, but not by hiding the unpleasant from their sight. Instead I would like to see us make better use of all the talents lost to poverty, disability, and feeling disconnected.

Like everything else it begins one person at a time. We need to conquer the, "that's the way we've always done it," because that isn't true. We haven't always been a nation of so many disenfranchised and poor.

And it might be important to note that all of us are going to become older everyday and the word "poor" is encompassing more of us every year.  In those still famous words, "We have met the enemy and he is us."