Sunday Night With John: The Thin Line Between

The Thin Line Between 

John Paul Derryberry 

We all have  subconsciously done it. Heck, most of us on truth serum would admit to doing it consciously.  We see someone less fortunate and pass judgement.  We jump to conclusions and say, how can anyone become homeless? How can anyone let themselves be abused? How can anyone stay with an abusive partner, or be swayed by a  captivating slime bag, twisting a religion or political party to their perverted views?  And then, as quickly as we have passed judgement, we dismiss them as less than us, less worthy of compassion, and less than human.

 This behavior takes away the context that led that person to end up in the decisions they have made. No one wakes up at age seven and says, "I want to be a loser with a an abusive partner." "I want to be druggie when I grow up". Or, "I want to participate in a twisted view of a peaceful religion". A series of events have to occur to make a person ripe to be preyed upon. The correct recipe has to be concocted to create a monster ready to pounce on the weak. The problem is that a number of ingredients in this recipe are out of control. If we ever allowed ourselves to admit the fragile nature of our success, we would have to admit that if one or two things went differently for those people we judge, maybe they would have been successful, too. A worse thought is that if one or two things had gone differently for ourselves, maybe we would have become one of them. We act like the the line between homelessness and a mansion is as wide as the Grand Canyon instead of as thin as the point on a needle.

Just do the thought exercise of all that we didn’t control. We were not asked who our parents would be. I got lucky and landed two stellar parents. But, what if my dad was a drunk who came home and beat the crap out of me? Where would I be now? We do not choose where we live. How different would my life have been if I had grown up in a crime-riddled community instead of on a dirt road miles away from falling asleep to the sound of gunshots. No one asked me what country I would to start my life in. I got my my start in America, after we looted resources from a number of other countries.  This set me up for educational success, which I might not have had in certain other countries in our world.

No matter how we cut it, our success is partly due to breaks that we got that we had no control over. It gave some people a head start. Others had the money necessary to get out of a couple of bad breaks. Others had the clout to have doors opened for them. Yet we act as if those people who are less fortunate deserve what has happened to them. Taking that attitude is easier than dealing with the fact that there isn’t that much difference between them and us besides some breaks that went our way. The line between them and us is thin, and it’s thinner that anyone can measure.