Horse 1069 - It is Better to Give Than to Receive

"Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures."
- Joseph Addison, 1703

I lament the fact that my Ka will probably in all likelihood be written off. Mainly because with the amount of money that insurance company is going to give me back, the cars on offer are all quite frankly crap. Prudence suggests that I should use the money to repay a loan which still exists from the honeymoon, and the expenses of setting up a home.

Being told that all things will pass and that this world scarcely compares with what is to come, might very well be true, but to be on the receiving end of such a statement sounds to me like I have just been fobbed off with a thought-terminating cliché, or yet another meaningless and trite platitude. passed off though it was significant and original.

Quite frankly I am sick and tired of people telling me that things happen for a reason, but mainly because it doesn't actually solve anything.

I wonder how many people actually know the sting of not knowing if at the end of the fortnight, whether or not you're going to have a dollar in the bank to show for it? Or thinking about just how far you can stretch the budget if you don't have lunch for the week. How about knowing that you can save 50c by buying a loaf of White Bread as opposed to Wholemeal? Or that Franklins White Bread is 17c cheaper than Woolworths?
Do other people know what it's like to see that bored expression in people's face when you tell them that you yet again can't go out on Saturday night because you don't have the money? Or the tremendous boredom that follows when they stop asking you because you couldn't afford to in the first place?
Do they know what it's like to walk home in the rain, after standing on the train for an hour an a half? How about walking home in shoes with holes in them where the water leaks in? How about not going to the dentist, or the doctors and the price that putting up with the pain is cheaper because it isn't covered by Medicare?

It's amazing how much wisdom there is in people who can not, or more to the point will not empathise with you, when they themselves have never been through similar circumstances. If anything I have been taught that richer people actually are a better class of people, and will go to extraordinary lengths to prove it. It's almost as though the Matthew Effect is running rampant:

For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.
— Matthew 25:29

If there is a reason for all of this, I certainly don't see it; I don't much enjoy being on the receiving end of it either. And I certainly don't like being told that things could be worse, because although that is also true, it's only an oh so fragile step to going there as well.