Leaning and Begging

Posted by shush

May 21, 2015

Leaning means to ask for help because you’ve tried doing it alone and you realized you couldn’t do it alone.
Begging is asking for help without even trying to exert enough effort to do it alone.

It’s easier to help someone if you could see that they are really having difficulty reaching their goals.
But it’s a total turn off when someone begs something from you and disguises it as asking for help.

Here’s an example.
A few years ago I gave a friend of mine a book to help her lift herself out of the begging cycle. I called it a cycle because she was already a grown woman with a child and a husband but they would rather not look for work because my friend’s mother sent her money regularly for all their expenses. They didn’t care if they lived in a house that was almost dilapidated or that their daughter wore clothes that were either donated to them or they got to buy from a local second-hand clothes store. They refused to budge and look for work. I told her that she and her husband could work in a fastfood restaurant or a convenience store since they had college credits. But they just both said that they were okay and avoided the topic from being brought up again.

Then recently I was disgusted when I received a text message from her. It said, could they have my old car that was more than a decade old so they could have a vehicle of their own to use.

A thought suddenly appeared in my mind.
I saw in my mind that old lady that is always in front of the local mall begging from morning to night asking me if I would give her my old car so she could use it on a regular basis for her own wants and needs.

If you do not have work and you ask for a car, where are you going to get the money to buy fuel for it and pay for its maintenance. Then I saw a friend that had a lot of potential for growth and prosperity turn into a beggar right in my mind.

Is it the culture that encourages such a mentality? Could the mother be blamed for spoiling them and giving them money from her own pocket even if they had the capacity and capability to find work and earn their own money?

Or is it because in our culture we were brought up to prioritize pride over hard work and perseverance. For whether we admit it or not, we have prejudices when it comes to work. If it is not an impressive type of work, then it’s not something worth pursuing.

Here’s another example.
There’s this old lady that is abused by her children and husband when it came to being a mother and wife. They all treated her like a slave who had to serve them at all times of the day. And because she was brought up in the old ways of being a mother and housewife, she didn’t teach her children to be self-sufficient. They all relied on her for each and every type of housework. They couldn’t even cook their own food because she wouldn’t let them. She had this notion that she had to do all the housework and her children would have their turn when they were all grown up and had their own families.

Then one day, her husband lost his work. And for many months they had to ask relatives for money for food and for paying their bills. And although some of her children were old enough to look for work on their own, they didn’t. So she had no choice but to find work as a domestic helper. Since then her children kept it a secret. When they were asked where their mother was, they never told anyone that she was working as a domestic helper. To them it was embarrassing to admit and was a job that only fitted the stereotype concept of a domestic helper.

But everytime their mother’s salary was given, they asked her for money for what they wanted, forgetting the fact (or ignoring it) that it came from working as a domestic helper.

What their mother didn’t realize was, while she was away from her children and was working as a helper for another family, she was treated better as a person and an individual there than at her own home. She got to eat on time, she had time to rest, she had time to watch TV, she had time to sit and collect her thoughts, her opinion was asked once in a while, she worked on a schedule that she herself made keeping the rhythm of her work and her personal responsibilities. She leaned on the people she worked for, and she got paid for it too. At their own home, she begged to be treated nicely, but she seldom was.

The mother leaned and got a better life.
Impressive.
My friend became a beggar and threw away a chance at a better life.
Such a pity.

Money, Streetwise, Tidbits

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