WARmachine88
Banned
there is also being poor in the spiritual aspect. Maybe a person has like one million in his bank account, but he is not happy in a spiritual way. That is another kind of being poor.
Being Poor
My brother-in-law used to manage a safari hotel in Uganda. All the people employed at the hotel lived at a local village. In his week there, his entire staff didn't turn up for work. Turned out, a villager had died and everyone took the day off for the funeral. Three weeks, later the same thing happened, only this time it was for a wedding.
To the villagers, community events were much more important than work - despite his hotel being the only well paying job available. The villagers didn't consider themselves poor - life was just what it was.
Anyway, to solve the problem he agreed with the villagers that every time a wedding, funeral or other major event occurred, he would just bring his hotel guests to the village - a bit like a cultural tour. While guests didn't get their rooms cleaned that day - they felt they got a special extra by attending "a rare and memorable" event.
True story.
To the villagers, community events were much more important than work - despite his hotel being the only well paying job available. The villagers didn't consider themselves poor - life was just what it was.
Anyway, to solve the problem he agreed with the villagers that every time a wedding, funeral or other major event occurred, he would just bring his hotel guests to the village - a bit like a cultural tour. While guests didn't get their rooms cleaned that day - they felt they got a special extra by attending "a rare and memorable" event.
True story.
WARmachine88
Banned
actually i think i can only know the taste of being rich if I have gone through a relatively poor life. or I can only taste the joy of life only after I have undergone the pain in this world.
Charge 7
Master Gunner
Well I've had a somewhat different experience than most I guess. I was raised by a father who came from nothing (quite literally as he was raised in an orphanage) and a mother who was born to wealth but saw it all disappear in the Great Depression. Perhaps their experiences and the tales and lessons they shared with me prepared me for what befell me years later.
Like my mother, I was born to a high standard of living. We weren't "rich" but we were definitely on the high end of middle class. I lacked for nothing and my parents put all five of us kids through college. I had nice clothes as a child and if there was a toy I wanted my parents made sure I got it even if it was to wait until Christmas to get it. And so this was my life until my 20s.
Then the Energy Crisis hit and at the same time my father was striken with what was then the second of four bouts with cancer he faced in his lifetime. He came so close to dying that time that my mother was preparing his funeral arrangements.
I was working as an investor on Wall Street and making quite a darn lot of money for a 26 year old. When I got the call from my mother of the straits the family was in I dropped everything. Said goodbye to my high paying job and lifestyle and went back to rural Vermont to save my family. My parents had everything wrapped up in the family fuel oil distribution business. The house, their cars, my two brothers who were still in college and a sister set to go that fall, and my kid brother who was in grade school and deserved to have what I had had.
I came home and went to work running my father's business. I lived on nothing and worked around the clock. If somebody's furnace went out at 3:00 am I went there and fixed it, if the little old lady had run out of oil because she had no money, I put oil in her tank just as my old man would've done. I did this for 10 years. My father never did fully recover and died some 13 years later when the fourth bout of cancer came.
By then, the investment world had changed quite a bit and I was able to get back into things and still stay in Vermont. So that's what I did and I eventually worked myself up to a fine standard of living once again. Enough that while I don't consider myself "rich" I was able to comfortably retire at age 50.
I am proud of many of the things I've done or accomplished in life, but the thing I am most proud of is that I am my father's son - by that I mean that I harkened well to his lessons and words of wisdom, that I made of my life a garden. I grow and I nourish still.
Like my mother, I was born to a high standard of living. We weren't "rich" but we were definitely on the high end of middle class. I lacked for nothing and my parents put all five of us kids through college. I had nice clothes as a child and if there was a toy I wanted my parents made sure I got it even if it was to wait until Christmas to get it. And so this was my life until my 20s.
Then the Energy Crisis hit and at the same time my father was striken with what was then the second of four bouts with cancer he faced in his lifetime. He came so close to dying that time that my mother was preparing his funeral arrangements.
I was working as an investor on Wall Street and making quite a darn lot of money for a 26 year old. When I got the call from my mother of the straits the family was in I dropped everything. Said goodbye to my high paying job and lifestyle and went back to rural Vermont to save my family. My parents had everything wrapped up in the family fuel oil distribution business. The house, their cars, my two brothers who were still in college and a sister set to go that fall, and my kid brother who was in grade school and deserved to have what I had had.
I came home and went to work running my father's business. I lived on nothing and worked around the clock. If somebody's furnace went out at 3:00 am I went there and fixed it, if the little old lady had run out of oil because she had no money, I put oil in her tank just as my old man would've done. I did this for 10 years. My father never did fully recover and died some 13 years later when the fourth bout of cancer came.
By then, the investment world had changed quite a bit and I was able to get back into things and still stay in Vermont. So that's what I did and I eventually worked myself up to a fine standard of living once again. Enough that while I don't consider myself "rich" I was able to comfortably retire at age 50.
I am proud of many of the things I've done or accomplished in life, but the thing I am most proud of is that I am my father's son - by that I mean that I harkened well to his lessons and words of wisdom, that I made of my life a garden. I grow and I nourish still.
Bear_Runner
Active member
I'm not gonna post my life story or anything, but when I was little, I used to talk to my family about my nuclear family being "poor". My Ma'am caught me once and said something simple that I still repeat to people when I hear them doing the same thing: "The only time you're poor, is when no one loves you. Baby girl, there is no amount of money that would ever pay for the love we have for you and the love your God has for you.. So, no, we're not poor, we're the wealthiest people on Earth with two beautiful daughters, and a roof over our head no matter how much it leaks." - It's weird, I know. But, it's kept me goin' when money's tight.
