I’ve been sick and off work recently and one of the most frustrating parts about it is seeing all I could be getting done, having time to do it, but not having the ability. I simply do not have the strength.

It fosters an anxiety that I’m falling further and further behind to a point where I will be eventually left.

You know what this is also true for?

Poverty.

Because poverty is a disease. It’s a disease that’s commonly accompanied with other co-morbidities such as depression, anxiety, hypertension and substance abuse.

The very definition of co-morbidities indicate that these accompanying conditions worsen and make it harder to manage the primary condition: poverty.

So, I try to keep that in mind before assuming people are in a particular situation because they lack initiative or because “they’re not doing anything”.

Like me, I’m sure they’d be happy to do the things that they readily see and already know to do to improve their situation, but struggle to do because of the disease.

And before someone compares the poverty in some random place like Slovenia to the poverty here in America, and how their poor people behave, don’t perpetrate the same level of crime, blah, blah, blah, let me add that hunger in a place stricken by indiscriminate famine is vastly different from hunger in a place where food is abundant but not equally accessible. Hunger hits differently when someone’s eating in your face.

I believe a critical step in the right direction is to stop judging and demonizing people in poverty. That only makes the condition more debilitating.

I believe the extra mile toward healing is helping the sick with what they’re trying to do but just lack the strength to do.

I can speak to its effectiveness because it’s what someone did for me to help me heal.