Learning From the Homeless

I went and served in the soup kitchen today and it was a great experience for me. The first was that in a twisted way, it would be worth it to be homeless. On the trays, there was plates of fish with a roll, vegetables, hot pie with ice cream, and even turkey with stuffing! This soup kitchen had been in Provo for more than 20 years and I guess it has reached out to those people that are willing to step up and serve by donating food.

My other thought was how caring these homeless people were. When we started serving them the food, I saw them give it to the person beside them. For me, that would have been the normal and the polite thing to do, but when I put myself in their shoes, I could imagine how hard it must have been. Who knows how long it had been since they had had a hot meal, and yet, when they saw the delicious food that was placed before them, they passed it on to their neighbors. My eyes teared up as I saw this and it really made me want to become better. How could these people who had nothing have nothing have so much love?  I felt that this was the ultimate example of love that a human being could show to another - the ability to give up something that you direly need and want to another.

I was awestruck by their example and will strive  to become better and better. I can't let the homeless show me up right? I guess it really is true when they say that you can learn something from anyone, anywhere, at anytime.

We are Money's Tool...

I had this thought process right before I went to bed a few weeks ago. Granted, this idea doesn't seem as revealing or world changing as it did when I first had the thought, but I still wanted to organize it.

I realized that as I started working my summer job and my income increased, so did my spending, but when I did not have a job, I had all the things that I needed to get by. I am sure that if I made even more money, that my spending would increase even more. In someways, this makes me jealous of a homeless person only for the specific reason of not being in the loop of "increased pay to increased spending." They are in the no pay, no spending cycle which seems more like a flat line than a cycle...

But anyway, does this not make it so that we are in a sense being used by money? I think this is what sets the truly wealthy from the everyday Joe. The everyday Joe is controlled by his emotions and compulsive spending when the wealthy is money's "Daddy." (My first thought was to put Money is the wealthy's female dog, but I refrained. You're welcome.)

In similarity, I found that as a college student, when I did not have any food, I wasn't hungry as much, but when I did have food, I found my self eating much more frequently. I did not change as a person, but what did? I think it is our natural instinct or social conditioning to use things that you have especially if it is something that you have worked hard to achieve. I personally lean towards social conditioning because of the way that our economic status is in with the national debt being as high as it has ever been. The society is completely fine with the idea of having Money own us. But I think everyone feels the self justification of "having earned the right" to spurge what they have earned thinking, "I deserve this, I worked hard." When does the cycle end? When will it ever be enough? I guess when we ever figure that out, all of us will be financially set and the nation wouldn't be in this financial mess.