Poverty is Best Viewed As a Lifestyle Choice and Not an Affliction

There are many places you can go in the world where you will find people who are more open and friendly than the United States.  Have you ever walked up to a stranger in the USA and started talking?  Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.  Its a chancy proposition.  Yet of all the people including and especially the poor of Brazil I have yet to receive a negative reaction.  Since I’m not the royal variety I talk to everyone when I am there.  The lowly guy who stands watch over the parked cars for a pocket change tip.   The guy who pulls a huge cart by his own muscle.  The super cute young girl on the bus.  Its easy for me because I don’t view anyone no matter their occupation as being better or worse, having more or less status than I.  

In the extreme majority of cases that I observe in Brazil I see that poverty and living conditions are choices.  People who are generally happy and healthy in spite of not having alot of material goods carry on by inertia not changing their circumstances.  Nor do I advocate they make a different choice.  This is where I differ with the lib-dems and many others view.   Its obvious to me that poor Brazilians are more happy than many if not most Americans.  Somehow they have realized that happiness is more important than the material. 

Here in the states its popular to think in terms of “oh he had no options so he had to turn to crime”.  “Poverty” is used as an excuse for so much here.  Yet being poor is really just a choice people make here.  If we are to be truly happy we have to have a full range of options available to us including being “poor”.   Its only after we accept that we must allow ourselves to be happy in all conditions including difficult circumstances that we are truly happy. 

For this reason the lib-dems preoccupation with expropriating everyones wealth comes off as mightily unhealthy.  All it does is portray them in the clearest focus as wannabe rich people.   They’re never going to represent the poor this way. They only end up representing the resentful.   How about a real choice dems?   It would be so much more compassionate to speak the truth and allow the poor to make their choices consciously.  Either way the choice to be happy is yours.  Your time on this Earth is limited.  Smile whereever you are at.