I was talking to my old friend Bobby Jean today and realized what I was experiencing. Because I was raised blue collar and have been even as an adult for a short time without enough food to eat I empathize with poor the world around more than those who have only been rich would naturally unless they had had to experience what it is not to have food or to have any hope for a future.
It might be easy for someone raised rich to separate themselves from all others who don't have enough worldwide and just to say something like, "Well. I'm privileged because God wanted me to be and they aren't so that is just the way it is." And it is possible there is some truth to this. However, I find this a very inhumane and not a useful point of view because it only separates humans into separate camps and causes more problems than it solves now and in the future.
A more useful point of view would be: "How can I help prevent more suffering like this?"
This is Nobles Oblige(the obligation of the nobility to help those less fortunate). This is the point of view of those who demonstrate nobility and seldom found in the Nouveau riche(the newly rich).
There is a true story about my life as a child that perfectly illustrates the point I'm trying to make. I was going to a public school in Glendale, California called Horace Mann Grade School. I was 8 years old and I was walking home with a classmate of mine, a boy my age. He was complaining that he had no father, his mother didn't have a job, he didn't have a bicycle and of how unhappy he was with all his mother's boyfriends who were coming and going from his house that sometimes hit him.
Because I was young and naive and only 8 I told the boy that we had a car, a 41 buick, that had been my uncle's until he died in a plane crash in 1942. I told my friend that I had a bicycle, a good home to live in, two great parents and that I had had my own bicycle since I was 5 and that my grandmother had just given my my father's old 22 rifle that he learned to hunt with when he was 6 years old in Oregon and Washington.
My friend starting hitting me and started crying at the same time in rage. I was the same age but he was short and skinny and not as strong as me. I could have really hurt him if I wanted to. But I understood that moment I hadn't fully understood his pain so all I did was to prevent him from hurting me by fending off the blows. I felt at that moment only sorrow for this boy and didn't have the heart to hurt him back so I only blocked the blows to my face and chest. Then a very strange thing happened, my father drove up in the blue '41 Buick and picked me up and the boy ran away crying and seeing all that I said was true. My father asked me why I didn't fight back and I told him I felt sorry for the boy and didn't want to hurt him. My father respected me in a very different way from then on. He understood I was a very deep and empathetic person who saw through people to who they really were. This began a more adult relationship with my Dad. It was the beginning of a real friendship with my father. He still didn't hang out with me much but we became very close after I was 12 and he started to let me drive his cars and work trucks in his business and then I started working for him summers at age 12 as an electrician's helper as by 13 I was 5 foot 10 inches tall and a good worker.
I never saw that boy again as a friend because he was ashamed. He must have moved away or been put in an orphanage or something soon after that because I don't remember seeing him much after that in school.
This story is why I came to care about people with difficult lives and why sometimes I have felt guilty at always having both parents always, my father was always either employed or owned his own business. My parents were always my best friends and stayed together until my Dad died. But most of my friends growing up were from broken homes though I find the most successful both in life and relationships always had both parents growing up.
But in the end some have everything and some do not. The only way I can make any sense of this is karma and the only way this makes sense is if you believe in reincarnation.
All other systems just seem illogical and completely arbitrary and unfair so I tend to believe in karma and reincarnation because this just makes sense. Is it useful to believe there is no order at all to the universe? Not for me. Such thinking in the end only leads to self destruction. So in order to succeed and to have a reason to continue to succeed in even staying alive I think one needs to believe in kindness and some kind of order. Without a sense of kindness and order I see no reason at all to live or even to choose to live. So what I'm actually saying here is that whether there actually is a reason to stay alive or not one must believe there is not to commit suicide. So if you want to stay alive you need to find something to believe in. It can even be nature or yourself but you need something to believe in to stay alive.
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