Your net worth is not your net worth
I don't make very much money and I don't have very much money, but I'm not poor, so I don't always feel viscerally what it feels like to be poor. I'm not talking just about the stress of having to find work, or working a low-paying long hours job to barely squeak by, but the deeper and more insidious stress of being treated like "less than" in this culture that fetishes wealth and imbues "positive" qualities, like intelligence or capability on people who happen to have money.
This morning I spent an hour on the phone with Bank of America trying to have them expedite a "pending charge" that had been hanging out on my $500 limit credit card for days. I had already paid it off and then some, but the bank wouldn't show the credit until they processed the pending payments - pending on their end. When I called for help, and spoke to four different people, not only did they not help me, they said things to me like, "Nothing is instant, honey" (Sasha pointed out that instant coffee is indeed instant), or talked right over me, or told me that "Your problem is asking for credit you don't have" even though the bank already had my money, the money I was asking to be processed so I could make a purchase. I was treated with such disdain and condescension, and when I finally asked to speak with the highest possible representative, I was put on hold endlessly only to have them come back on the line and tell me no one was available. I was shaking when I hung up, and as overly sensitive as it might seem, I started crying.I was crying out of frustration for sure, but I was also crying to just recall how people are treated when they are poor or believed to be poor. Because of my education, English as my first language, my ability to use a phone in a private space, I could at least try to advocate for myself. I remember working at Group Health and being so infuriated by how difficult the system was there for me to navigate - as an clinician and employee of the system. I would often complain and just as often try to make things work for my patients who did not have the savvy, the language, the hospital jargon, the ability to use the phone, the time, energy and capacity to advocate for themselves. This morning I was crying for all the people who are poor, not because of their poverty, per se, but for the way their dignity and honor is so easily stripped away. How they are assumed to be less than, ignorant, less hard working, less worthy, less human, than those of us with some money and far less than those with too much money. Money doesn't make you smart, hard-working, compassionate, or worth. It gives you "net worth" but not one single speck of more essential human worth.I know on my page I am mostly preaching to the converted. But today I feel inspired to remind myself, and anyone else who could every once in awhile use a reminder, of just how denigrated poor people are in our culture, and to do all we can not only to fight for equal rights for all, but also to work over time to show the honor, respect and dignity that every person deserves, irrespective of their financial situation. I think it wouldn't be too far off to say that often poor people are more resourceful, more resilient, more skillful in so many things, than people like me who have been handed so much of what they have.
As Father Greg says, "Here is the compassion we seek: to stand in awe of what the poor have to carry, not in judgement of how they carry it."
We are all in this together. Everyone is equally worthy. Show someone today just how much you value them as a human being. Not for what they have or what they do, but for who they are. More love, less hate. More inclusion, less marginalization. More courage, less fear.