Living in Poverty and being Rich

  Poverty is such a simple word, but it is so complicated at the same time. The vast majority of individuals will not fully comprehend the real implication of poverty just by reading its literal meaning from the dictionary, but by learning from their surroundings and experiencing hardship itself. Defining poverty can be being poor financially but is also defined as a comfortable way of living as well as spiritually too.

What does it mean actually to be poor? Most people think that being poor consists of not being able to pay the bills or mortgage on their home.

Some may say that it is not having enough food that people have to search for leftovers in the garbage while living on the street. Poverty defined is “the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions” (Merriam-Webster 2018). Poverty forces an individual to plan out or decide what items are enticing, significant, and luxurious. It forces the needs and wants to be placed as not essential to life and overall self-worth. Life with poverty removes the irrelevancies in life by making the poor focus on what they need rather than what they want to do. The word poverty can be a multitude of different subjects such as having only a few necessities in life.

Majority of the time people see poverty as a negative more than a positive. With the word, poverty does not mean it is necessarily wrong all the time. When people are financially unstable, it can feel challenging to concentrate on being cheerful, especially if they worry too much about how they will make ends meet or wonder if they will be able to put food on the table. “Many people feel that in order to be happy that you need to have certain things” (Caldwell 2017). Many individuals who do not have a considerable amount of wealth look for experiences rather than materialistic items. An example of this is siblings who are going outside to play using their imagination. The children go on backyard adventures, play basketball, and look at the sky enjoying every single moment of their life. While all of this happening, the children do not realize how much confliction the parents are going through to try and make ends meet. Even though the parents are struggling financially, they find time for new memories without the use of money. Poverty does not always mean bad in a sense, but it is how people perceive it.

The word poverty does not always have to mean the need for physical items, but it could be the need for spiritual items as well. Spiritual poverty is the lack of ability to acquire religious items rather than materialistic items. “So, in this regard, being poor in spirit means recognizing one’s inability to buy, earn, deserve, or purchase spiritual blessings, that without the intervention of another, rich benefactor, one is damned (stopped) in his ability to grow spiritually” (Degraw 1). Poverty in spirit means being able to realize how to turn to someone who can provide the spiritual background some individuals do not acquire. Without possessing spiritual poverty, one could never truly recognize their need for help, so one would never ask for advice nor benefit from it. Being poor in spirit allows an individual to recognize the need for a savior or a religious figure, to plead for what they cannot obtain on their own. Poverty in spirit prioritizes a person’s religious purchases instead of items that will not help advance them spirituality. The thought of poverty is better than the idea of being rich in spirit. Being rich in spirit limits blessings by what can be truly achieved and obtained on one’s life by eliminating their needs. This idea of spiritual richness leads one to believe they need no help, due to their belief they can have it all right now. It allows one to simplify life and eliminate obstacles to spiritual growth. Having poverty in spirit eliminates any unnecessary distractions and irrelevancies from an individual’s own life by focusing on their spiritual need rather than what they want to do. 

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