This post comes courtesy of Xoggoth, who has provided a link in his most recent comment about the poor of the world, who follow a different evolutionary path than the more fortunate.
According to this article, studies, and my own observations in life, poor people in poor neighborhoods tend to father children younger, give birth younger, enjoy reasonably good health for about 20 years less than those who are well off, and then die younger.
The reason I’m posting on this issue is because I’m directly involved in the reality of this. The saying that “The reason we get along better with friends than we do with family is because we can choose our friends” is true enough for me. I have only distant relationships with a few members of my family, a nephew and a niece, and I hardly ever hear from them.
At my age, the 70′s, it’s kind of nice to have some family, and so a family came to me in a manner of speaking. I know a poor woman who has 5 children. She’s a very good person but also very disadvantaged. She’s an excellent mother but was unable to prevent her young teenage daughter from becoming pregnant. Fortunately, the daughter miscarried.
I’ve known her and her kids for about 3 years, as I’m their landlord, and I’ve become very fond of them all. So long story short, I legally adopted the mother and am now her birth father of record and the legal grandfather of her children, who are slowly learning to call me Grandpa.
I built a large fenced area in their front yard to keep the kids safe from big dogs and pedophiles and put a nice big deluxe swing set in it, slide, teeter-totter and all, and the littlest girl, who’s 5, hasn’t stopped smiling since. Today I took the teenage daughter shopping and bought her a large back-to-school wardrobe of very much in-style clothes. All she’s ever owned before was hand-me-downs and free-box clothes. Now she plans to give all her old clothes away, and boy does she look happy.
My new daughter’s oldest son lives with his father but prefers my company whenever he’s here with his mother, because I’m always gentle-spoken with him, unlike his screwball of a father. He’s now learning to speak above a whisper.
The last two children are a pair of infant boys, twins, who I hope to ensure don’t grow up in poverty the way their older siblings have done so far.
I want to see these kids going to college and hopefully I’ll live long enough to at least get them well set on that road. I’m not rich but I’m certainly not poor, either, so with luck my new family will have a chance to join the evolutionary path of the middle class, at least.
The teenage girl is starting to lose her hostility and indifference, she’s responding to questions with real answers instead of shrugs and a look of boredom, she’s not yelling or having fits of rage as much or rebelling as much against her mother.
This isn’t about me. I’m not writing this for a pat on the back, which would do no good even if I was because I’m totally anonymous to you. This is about fulfillment, having the love of a family and loving a family in return, about giving hope, joy and happiness to children, and not least in having deserving heirs instead of the sorry, selfish and self-centered lot I begat who have no time for me.
When my new daughter looks at me with new hope in her eyes, or when my little 5 year old granddaughter runs up to give me a hug, I know I’ve done exactly the right thing. Because in the end, when you’re gone, you’re gone, and all that there is is what you left behind. Love is a selfish act, we give it because we want to receive it, and we all leave this world sooner or later. We can do it feeling mean and despised or we can go out feeling decent about ourselves.
I usually blog about the hateful, rotten crap that we humans do, simply because people really do piss me off a lot. Human behavior frustrates me. I guess this time I’m trying to say that it doesn’t take much to spread a little happiness and light, anyone can do it.
I highly recommend it. It sure works for me.