No Catharsis for Most

Not too many folks believe it, but I am actually a kind person. For example, a woman owned a 26 year old horse and had no where to keep it. I told her she could leave it on our property, for free - as long as she paid for its feed and hay. Well, finances being what they were, she didn't feed it. I won't let any animal starve if I can help it, so we paid for feed and bought it hay. Finally the horse - old and crippled and arthritic - had to go. I told the woman that she would have to put it down. She finally got a relative to come and get it and have it shot and buried on their property.

A year passed, and we had written off the expenditures of the horse as a bad debt. Suddenly, this past weekend, a Christmas card arrived from this woman - with a $500 check inside. We were stunned, pleasantly so - and I told her. It had taken her 3 years to crawl out from her bad debt and miserable divorce, yet she paid it off at last. She said it was a catharsis for her - to pay off every debt she owed.

And I look around me at all of the miserable people, whining that they can't get ahead, that no one will help them, that no one will succor them, that no one cares. Most of them have been cared for all of their lives; expect someone, anyone, the government, their neighbors, their families, their friends, to pay for what they want and need. They take and take and take, with no thought of what they owe. They walk away from debts they incurred as if those debts had nothing to do with them. They insist that because they can do what any rabbit does - screw and breed - that the world OWES them and their ever-so-precious (usually spoiled, rude, obnoxious, demanding) brats. They vote for people who promise them more and more, never caring who is paying the penalty or the bills for those politicians who promise them freedom from want. Some of these greedy, grasping morons actually believe that President Obama is using his own money to pay their bills, while others believe that the Federal Government has lots of free money, and when they run out, they print more. There is no economic education any more; no responsibility, and no need for them. People are stupid and believe what they are told - that they DESERVE the sweat off of other peoples' brows.

These people in their whining self-pitying misery will never know the freedom of paying off one's debts, the satisfaction that comes from accomplishing financial success, of raising children who strike out on their own and succeed. They will never know the extreme pleasure of getting a call from their daughter, as I did last month; that this tall, willowy, wonderful child, who worked three jobs to put herself thru college (even with scholarships and grants) got a job that pays $75,000 a year with benefits. They will never know the joy of success, of overcoming failure, of becoming adults who take responsibility and life into their own hands and wrest all that they can from it.

I heard a great quote yesterday, and it rings true - "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death". The sad part is that they are too stupid to even know that they are starving.