Cards We Are Dealt

Coming home late from a meeting, my husband and I decided to pass by a fast-food drive-thru. As we were ordering food, a young man selling flowers approached us. Despite the late hour, he was still cheerful. We bought a few strands of sampaguita and overpaid him. Since it was late, we asked him if he had already eaten dinner. He shook his head. So we ordered burgers, fries, and a drink for him, too. As we pulled away from the drive-thru, I watched his forlorn figure walk to a dark corner to eat dinner.

Many times on a busy day, one is called to notice the exigencies of life. A friend who is in need of money for an electric bill. A distant relative whose child is sick. A brilliant young woman who needs to opt out of school so she can work and for her younger siblings’ tuition fees. An old woman who has spent her life selling amulets in the streets, rain or shine. A family losing everything in a flood.

On the other side of the story, I have met people with indescribable wealth. One pretty bag or one shiny car from their collection could send a child to school from elementary to college.

Lodged in the middle class, I watch the two ends of the economic spectrum with wonder. The disparity has always perplexed me. In fact, this unfathomable gap between the haves and have-nots is one of the reasons why I am an agnostic. It is very difficult to reconcile a caring God with the everyday cruelties of real life.

When I was in my 20s, I decried the systemic inequalities that kept people poor. I knew by heart Marx’s battle cry, “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! You have a world to gain.” I joined a lot of protests and marches. But when I experienced the violence of crowd dispersion and tear gas, I stepped away from the streets. No more world-shaking ventures for me. Although the wish for a cure-all for global inequity or a formula for utopia will always be my first wish should I meet a genie in a bottle.

To prevent myself from despairing poverty and begrudging wealth, I have a collection of personal possible explanations in my mind. Like a slideshow, I pick from them whenever I encounter a daily dose of economic polarity. When I despair at the seeming tsunami of poverty, I try to remember the paradoxical thing that Jesus Christ said in Matthew 26:11, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” (Italics mine)

Part of my carousel of philosophy is a scene from the movie, The Matrix. Agent Smith, the antagonist, explained that the earlier iteration of The Matrix, where everyone was happy and problem-free, was too perfect for humans. It was unanimously rejected. So it seems we are not programmed for paradise.

Faced with the enormity of wealth that will last some families generations and the specter of poverty that millions of families try to escape from, I recite the elegant lines of William Blake in Auguries of Innocence.

Every Night & every Morn

Some to Misery are Born

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight

Some are Born to sweet delight

Some are Born to Endless Night

Sometimes, it feels apathetic and downright paralyzing to accept that this is our human condition: “some people are born to sweet delight and some are born to endless night.”

But in the split of a second, when I see a beggar knocking on the window of a brand-new Range Rover asking for alms, my mind searches for a framework to understand the stark polarities of life. Since I cannot wage a revolution every day–there’s work and house chores to be done and bills to pay–maybe the best thing I can do is to slow down, roll open my window, give the beggar money, and wish him a speedy “Godbless! Ingat!” before rushing to catch the tail end of a green light so I won’t be late for a meeting.

So I don’t get dispirited out of sharing, I draw from two sources. One is Kahlil Gibran who wrote in his book, The Prophet, “For in truth it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.” My second source is Shakespeare. In Merchant of Venice, he wrote that mercy was like rain, it does not discriminate where it falls.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

Aside from obsessively playing Gardenscapes during my free time, I also play Solitaire. In Solitaire, cards are dealt with utter randomness. Some sets are simply unwinnable from the onset. A few are a joy to play, each card unfolds to reveal the next effortlessly and you finish the set with high scores. Most of the time, focus and patience win the game.

Misquoting Forrest Gump, maybe life is a box of playing cards, as you really don’t know what you are going to get. Maybe our fortunes and misfortunes are cards we are given in our lifetimes. It is possible that when I meet a beggar, he is simply having a series of terrible hands. When I see a rich person, maybe she is, at that moment, flushed with royals and aces. And most of us are just trying our best to stay in the game of life. Then all of a sudden, with one lucky card, our positions will change.

So there is a chance I won’t stay in the middle class. In a stroke of fortune, I might win the lotto and be catapulted to the affluent end of the spectrum. Or a misfortune might befall me and I might find myself at the bottom of the economic scale. I hope that I can meet both scenarios with good cheer and fortitude like the young man we met in the drive-thru. And I hope to keep a sense of wonder at the perspective the new vantage point will bring. Maybe this come-what-may-attitude or bahala na si Batman openness is the ace up my sleeve.