The Psychology of Being Poor

I recently watched this documentary on CNA Insider and then found out later that it was actually from a few years ago. But still, it gave the viewers a glimpse into the lives of those people living in rental flats, their struggles in life and how they were coping on government's welfare and social services rendered to them. Although this was a throwback series, the reality still remains that such groups of people do exist and by knowing more about their situations, we open up our minds and be more grateful that some problems we have in life, are not as big as compared to theirs.

Surprisingly, most of the comments weren't so nice by putting the blame on them that they brought this situation upon themselves. Honestly, I was also surprised why they had so many children, or keep adding to the brood, when they were already struggling to feed the children already. Imagine, having 7 children, on a $800 pay check and the fact that if he didn't work, he won't receive income since it was daily rated? And at that point of filming, they just had a one week old son. The younger twins, who were 18 months old, were already a handful and very active, plus with the older school going children, honestly, I would go crazy, haha. 

There were quite a lot of bashing on some of the families and I had a lot of hate for this husband who was so egoistic and lazy, even violent, and his excuses for working part time were so pathetic. The wife wasn't too far off, who worked part time in a  fast food restaurant as well despite her educational background, and she merely worked for two three times? And she was also pregnant at that time, even though, she wasn't so sure if she could provide the newborn a better life as she was already struggling to bring up her two young daughters.

I think the hate came about because the commenters were generally concerned for the children's well being, growing up in such environment can affect them psychologically. But amidst the concern, we also have to think about why they keep digging deeper into their undesirable situations, making it worse than it already had been, such as maybe due to lack of awareness or education. So instead of criticising them, we could perhaps do more by rendering emotional support and education such as financial literacy.

But it was also heartwarming to know that some of the families wanted to build better lives for themselves and their children because being this poor and struggling is very hard. And they don't want their children to end up like them with their checkered past of drug abuse and jail time. The past is in the past. Though it is a tough road ahead, eventually they can get out and have better life experiences instead of just existing. One of them was planning on taking up courses to get better job offers to better support her 6 children financially while the other worked hard enough to accumulate enough CPF money to buy a two bedroom flat. 

It comes down to choices. We can choose to remain like this or get out and slowly make ourselves out of this darkness and make better choices. Anyone can blame the situation we are in and sometimes, we do not choose to be in such situations but it doesn't mean that it is the end. We may not completely get out or it will take a very long time but at the very least, we can choose to make the situation more bearable or improve on it so that we do not always end up miserable and unhappy because there is more to life than just existing.