Predestination & Getting By With Help From Friends

It’s Sunday—the beginning of the week or the end of it, depending on how one looks at it. I’m sitting in the park, sheltered from the rain in the amphitheater pondering the haves and the have nots. No, not the Tyler Perry series, but the occurrences in life of the fortunate versus the less fortunate. When I was younger and complained, my father always would scowl me and proclaim there were others less fortunate. As I got older, I realized that some other father probably said that to his child, and I would in that be one of the persons that fell into the category of “less fortunate”. See, the theory of “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” holds true here when speaking of life’s fortunes. If someone is rich, there must be someone poor. If there is someone fortunate, there also must exist someone unfortunate. So, while my father was very correct in informing me during my bellyaching moments that someone was less fortunate than me, simultaneously, there existed someone more fortunate than me. So, why did I have to limit myself to focusing my comparison to only one aspect of the spectrum of fortunate?

As an adult, I’ve been asking myself this question. Two years ago, I took a trip to Houston. I carpooled with a lady, and along the way, we had a discussion that has stuck with me. Her husband is in construction and very well to do. She’s a stay-at-home mother of three and a part-time bookkeeper for her husband. At the time, she was homeschooling two of her children. One child had already graduated from homeschooling, and the school year following this trip, she enrolled her youngest in a private Christian school. Her middle child, she continued to homeschool, because he was close to graduation. I mention the homeschooling aspect because until moving, I had no idea what this truly entailed. Let me say, I’m very impressed and truly stunned by it. It made me want to do it, and I couldn’t help being envious that I was a working parent who couldn’t afford to quit the nine-to-five to homeschool.

So, as we cruised the interstate in her soccer mom SUV, we begin discussing politics and life. In the process, she mentions her father, who was an entrepreneur. She stated, that in the land of capitalism, people were meant to be poor. My jaw dropped. What? We are the land of the plenty. Here, the opportunity to be anything one wants to be exists. With hard work, anyone can be successful. At least, that’s what all my textbooks and teachers had taught me. But she had a different view. She stated that her father was a very determined and hard worker. He put in extended hours daily, but no matter how hard he worked, he was meant to be poor. She pointed to his day-to-day efforts to get by not affording him to have money to set aside. Despite not living above his means, he still fell behind on his bills. Falling behind on bills, lowered his credit rating. His lower credit rating caused him to pay more in interest for loans and limited his lines of credit. Banks turned him away, and he had to use payday loan shark businesses and pawn shops for credit. So, the poorer he was, the more he had to pay—penalized for being poor. It’s a circle difficult, if not impossible for some, to break. She’d been fortunate to break the cycle for herself by marriage. Her husband was upper-middle-class and fortunate to have financial help from his family when starting his business. His parents’ wealthy friends gave generous wedding gifts (money) that afforded them the down payment on their house. The land that they built their home on was family property.

I reflected on what she said and realized her story was not so very uncommon for most people that I know. I didn’t know any successful persons that had come from absolutely nothing who had made it without any help from anyone. The rags to riches stories I knew only existed on the Hallmark Channel. The hard workers who I know are struggling have been struggling most of their lives and getting nowhere. I pondered if this is not what is called “predestination”.

Predestination is not something I ever understood. Many say it is a cop out to do nothing and allow life to happen to us. If it truly exists, though, why do we bother to do anything at all? Others argue that by definition we act because we are predestined to act. But if we have no control over our fate, future, and destiny, is that not depressing? And for the have nots, does that mean conditions will never improve? And is it not beneficial for the haves to have the have nots? For if all the have nots suddenly were to disappear, doesn’t that mean that some of the haves would shift into being have nots? After all, there are always people with more. If the bottom layer of a three-layer cake is cut away, the middle layer becomes the bottom layer. Which makes me wonder if the haves truly seek to help the have nots. Or maybe they help just enough to keep the have nots around.

These deep thoughts have come to me today for a rather superficial reason. I’m a have not on any day due to very real circumstances. But today, I’m a have not, because I’m stuck here due to not having an umbrella. I’m parked too far away to transport my laptop through the downpour.