RE: How Is The Game Treating You?
Woah... well done.
To answer some of your opening questions, I'm neither poor nor rich. I've never been either, but I have been... well off, especially when still living at home with my folks. I am currently the most poor I have ever been, both in assets and income. Below the mean, though not quite "poverty."
I own my own business, but it doesn't earn enough to pay me, so I do contract work to support my family.
On value, my first thought was purpose, but that's because I've taken time to think about these things, too.
Here's what surprised me:
Do you ever wake up in the morning and wish you could just go back to sleep for a while?
I realized the answer is now "hardly ever," because of purpose. Things are not ideal, but I'm working towards something. Compared to when I worked full-time, earned more money, spent more money, and didn't feel like I was working toward anything. I was just trying not to go broke. Well now I've been broke, and it gave me a lot more focus on that question of what has value.
Thank you for sharing your perspective and life experience @wholeself-in,
The system we live in currently promotes separation and breakdown of family units. To send a child off at the age of 18 to college, while they are racking up 100's of thousands of dollars worth of debt in student loans, is a nice set up for people to become enslaved, in my humble opinion.
I have a family member who is currently a quarter mil in debt and still working on her doctorate in the medical industry. She currently works for a bank and swallows anti-depressants to get through her life. I'm completely shut out from my family for trying to help them see things the way I see them. At the end of the day I am a perpetual non-functioning person in this system though, so my credibility is based off of how little success I've obtained.
I've been chronically homeless for the past ten years, and preparing to be homeless yet again. Some people have offered me kind words and empathy, but to keep things real, I don't fear homelessness because I have lived it so many times and know I can survive one way or another.
My hardships have given me the greatest gift anyone can ask for in life. Wisdom, perspective, and an innate understanding of what life is truly all about.
Those who dismiss and degrade my perspectives likely couldn't walk a mile in my shoes, and the sad part is I would still help them if they had to.
Purpose is what is is all about, and it is nice to know others think about these things.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts :)
I think more people are waking up to the problem of systems that turn people into products, commodities to be farmed. I think that more will begin to turn away from such systems, and faster, but not that it will be easy.
I don't doubt that you will take care of yourself on the next phase of your journey, but I'm sorry to hear it anyway. I can't see being homeless as anything other than a hardship.
Then again, I also see the situation of that medical student as a hardship - and not the one I'd choose, of the two. I am part of the medical system (the job I left
and the contract work I still do) on a much lower tier - my job had a Bachelor's entry level, though the education system's inflationary bubble quickly raised that to Master's and is now flirting with Doctorate. I have just about had it with the whole health care system, its regulations and its gatekeepers. For every amazing lifesaving treatment, there must be 100 people who have delegated the important task of taking care of their health to a system that doesn't really care what outcomes they get. And at least 100 "health care professionals" who wonder if there is any purpose to their hard work.