The Poverty Blessing
I worked with a guy years ago who was wanted by Nasa right out of High School.
Nasa wanted to pay for his college and pay him to work for them while he was in school. Now the interesting thing is we both worked in the restaurant business at the time that I met him. He was a line cook, I was a server, and we both knew that there was a long story that led him to be a line cook instead of a Nasa engineer.
Long story short, he decided to take a year off of school, went to prison, and somewhere in between got hooked on drugs.
A missed opportunity that completely shifted his life.
One day I asked him what was the most important lesson he learned in his life. What he said next wrecked me.
“The Struggle”
He went on to say how some things are only learned in the struggle. How the struggle helped him learn so much. Not the school that Nasa wanted to pay for and not being a math genius. It was the struggle that taught him the most.
This same principle reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Maze Runner.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Maze Runner is a movie where a virus has plagued the world that has come after everything was scorched and the last hope is subjected teenagers that have been made to forget their childhood and put into a maze where they have to grow their own food, develop their own government, and survive. The maze is meant to produce a certain enzyme in their brain that can help the human race survive against the zombie-type virus.
That’s a movie but it is also real life.
There is something that only going through the struggle can produce.
Personally, I believe that if companies hired based on their problems and a person’s past they could get way more accomplished.
When you understand the mental stress that a person had to go through and their story you’re more likely to see if they can help fulfill the mission that you are going after.
Being a young black male raised in the Deep South in a dysfunctional family plagued by addiction I can say this is true. There’s some parts of me that think I need counseling, other parts know it, but when I meet an obstacle its different from many of the people that I went to school with or even met throughout my life.
Impostor syndrome still lurks in any of the new things that I partake in but it gets me excited. It’s weird but it just feels right.
Another thing with growing up in poverty that I am so thankful for is that I have already won. I remember growing up our cars breaking down, I remember our water being turned off, electricity, etc. Most of all I remember thinking when I was a kid and watching movies, “wow that must raise the electricity bill a lot.” Every “simple” accomplishment that I achieve is a step up from where I was raised.
Poverty, at whatever level, makes you think differently and it makes you use what you have at hand.
You become a dangerous person when you realize that everything you need is on the inside of you.