'Fraid So

My drive to work takes me past one of several trailer parks nearby. Chris, my best friend as a child, lived in a trailer and I thought nothing about it back then. But lately I’ve been afraid of them.

Here’s how my emotional logic works:

• People don’t naturally want to live in a trailer.
• They must be living in a trailer because they have no choice.
• They must not have enough money.
• Without money, people can’t get their basic needs met like food, health care, and clothing.
• Those people must be cramped, hopeless, miserable, and ashamed.
• I don’t want to be poor, cramped, hopeless, miserable, and ashamed.
• I better stay away from trailers.

I don’t actually worry about being poor, but I certainly don’t want it to happen. So, unconsciously, I distance myself from it as much as possible. That’s why I’m uncomfortable driving past worn down sections of town, shopping in Aldi discount grocery, or seeing beggers on the street.

It’s why I feel good staying at a nice hotel, shopping in an upscale mall, wearing snazzy clothes, or sipping cappuccino in a Barnes & Noble. It keeps poverty at bay, misery out of mind, hopelessness far from my heart. I feel secure, upwardly mobile, successful just by association. It sounds shallow when I say it now, but it’s true.

But I’ve become the very thing I’ve been trying to avoid. My aversion to anything resembling poverty has me feeling ashamed now. I’m miserable in my middle-class comfort, knowing that people need help. I feel hopeless trying to figure out what to do. I’ve been too cooped up and cramped in this narrow way of thinking and living.

So now when I drive by the trailers, I feel less of an aversion and more of a connection. They represent now more than the poverty of their tenants, but the poverty of my soul. And that's a good thing.