Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
It can be left at that.
There is no utility in a victim mentality even if there's no question the person is being victimized. Even a person sitting in a gulag is not served by a complaint mentality.
Born on the wrong side of the tracks isn't something to dwell on, but a problem to solve. I was born on the wrong side of the street, went to prison, and have no college degree or credentials, and I'm doing great. I felt sorry for myself for about an hour once, when our work crew ran out of water before noon on a sweltering day, and we had 5 more hours of work. Then I worked harder, channeling my frustration into what needed to get done.
That's probably mostly an innate character trait, and something difficult to learn. I've always had the sense that I've got great capability to affect circumstances, or to adapt to them.
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While there are plenty of people that have a pity-me attitude when they shouldn't I still do not agree that "where there's a will there's a way" is truly valid.
I assume you were born in the USA, in a country that's rich and has a lot of opportunity and antidiscrimination laws. There's a good chance you're also probably a man that's also white. If true, that right there would put you in about the most socially and economically favorable possition there is on the entire planet.
Sure, there are those stories of how some poor kid in Africa where people make $1 a day strives hard to make things better for himself and ends up working his way up to being a millionaire. But those kinds of stories are more about luck and coincidence than the actual hard work. There are a lot of people in this world who have worked extremely hard their whole life and tried to make as good of financial decisions as possible and still ended up poor and with nothing to show for all they did.
Another thing to is that every choice usually has a trade off. A single guy who doesn't work may have a hard time finding someone to marry him. But a guy who works too much and doesn't spend hardly any time with his family is also asking for a divorce. While money and riches can have an effect on a person's wellbeing and happiness they aren't necessarily a measurement of said wellbeing and happiness either.
For an example I've come to ecomodder in order to save time and money on my vehicle(s), meaning I can use more of my work efforts for other things instead of mostly paying for a car. That work may be secular or it may be something else. Planting a garden might not pay in money but it may allow a person to reap other valuables in quite a literal sense.