@paradise-found has started a great initiative to bring people closer together by encouraging them to share their stories about things they are grateful for and things that help them nurture contentment, happiness and gratitude. I am a grateful person and begin each day with expressing gratitude to my Allah (the God and Universal Power I believe in) as well as to the universe. I am usually thankful for having an amazing and beautiful son to love who has taught me a lot about life and how to be a good person, for my loving husband, for being healthy and waking up next to my family, for having such an awesome mother and amazing siblings and for being positive and for having a roof over my head and good food to eat.
Today, I would like to be thankful for something else besides all of this. For the past few days, I have been thinking a lot about beggary. I even had a short conversation about this topic with @lightsplasher and he came up with a very inspiring story on the subject.
For a long time, I perceived beggary as something negative and unhealthy. I thought of beggars as cowards who just knew how to make easy money and weren’t ready to put in real effort and hard work to earn an honest living for themselves and live with integrity. This attitude made me a little bitter towards beggars too. I wasn’t rude or mean to them but I often used to not look at them and think ‘Oh, here they come again’ each time a beggar approached me.
My mindset about beggary and beggars in general changed a lot in the past few days. Just as I was observing a beggar beg in front of different people and move from one car to another and treated in different ways by those around him, I realized a lot of things. Firstly, I realized that begging wasn’t an easy job. For long, I had labelled it as a means to earn easy money but seeing that beggar get insulted by one person after another made me realize that he wasn’t earning money through an easy means. People here usually offer beggars anywhere from Rs10-100 and sometimes a beggar may get more than a 100Rs which is equivalent to $1 from one person in a day but that’s not something that happens too often. So for a mere half a dollar, that beggar had to plead incessantly in front of different people. Some did give him a little money while others refused him. Some people even went to the lengths to ridicule him and put labels on him.
Isn’t that something hard to bear? Doesn’t that crush a person’s heart? Of course it does. Imagine someone say no to you for something you desperately want. How would you feel then? You would be crushed, won’t you? If we would feel that way, how do we expect beggars to not feel bad with this treatment? I too was of the opinion that beggars had become immune to this treatment and since they have opted for this life, they shouldn’t complain about it.
That being said, on that day, I began thinking differently. I somehow felt that beggar’s pain and felt that he wasn’t earning through an easy means. Yes, he wasn’t working straight for 6 to 7 hours in an office or some factory and was just spreading his hands in front of people for a few bucks, but that didn’t mean he was earning it easily.
Another thing that I realized was that beggary requires more courage than I thought. While earlier I believed beggars were somehow cowards who didn’t have the strength and courage to do something meaningful, worthwhile and something that would bring them more integrity, that day I felt that they weren’t cowards. I called myself strong and confident but even I didn’t have that much courage to ask others for money.
Who knows what those beggars may have gone through? Who knows all the hardships they may have experienced that forced them to beg? Who knows of the pain they have gone through? Nobody but only they know of what they have been through. Nobody likes to put themselves on the disposal of others and if someone is doing things that are making them experience ridiculing behavior by others, only they know what’s compelling them to choose that option.
I still don’t perceive beggary as something really healthy or as something I would consider doing but somehow I have become less judgmental of it I have become more accepting of beggars and now I wish to do something to help them out. But how does that connect with being grateful? What did that experience make me thankful for? On that day, I became thankful of being able to let go of the animosity I nurtured towards the concept of beggary and beggars and to become more accepting towards them. At the same time, I was also more grateful for not going through experiences that would compel me to beg and for having been more fortunate than those who were forced directly or indirectly into beggary. I was extremely thankful for raised in a more positive environment than many and although I did go through lots of undesirable experiences, none of them was bad enough to force me to choose this option. I was extremely grateful at that point. Thank you to the #gratefulvibes initiative for giving me a chance to share my story with others.
I am open to all sorts of viewpoints so do share your views on the topic. Till next time, love and light,
Sharoon.
@ecotrain is a great place with some amazing people and content so do visit it if you want to be inspired and inspire others.
