Relative Poverty

Marta and I spoke about poverty the other day. She felt that only the really down and out, the hopeless, were actually poor. No one could argue with her that real poverty is different from what many people mean when they say they are broke or poor or feeling desperate about money.

My money worries are miniscule compared to those of someone who has nothing ... someone living on welfare ... a refugee anywhere in the world, but especially one living in one of the camps. My financial state is nothing like the poverty in which almost all Africans and Indians whether from the sub-continent or displaced here in the Americas live. I do not have to worry about starving to death or dying of one of the many poverty-related diseases that plague the really poor.

But concerns about money cause me anxiety.

It is not that I have nothing; it that I own something I value and do not want to lose it.

I have embarked on a project that will give me a home until I can no longer live here by the lake, a home which will in turn, provide security when I am really old and something for my children to inherit when I die. This project is swallowing huge amounts of money, way more than I expected it to ... not because I wanted to create a mansion but because of problems over which I had no control ... building problems caused by the landscape and by the builders I chose. Nature can be hard but at least you can't blame anyone. Human ineptitude and dishonesty are something else. They cause stress. So does wondering where you can find the money to fix the mistakes or complete the essential parts of the job left unfinished.

My pension provides enough to live carefully and when I look after dogs I can afford some luxuries. If the house does not devour more of what is left of my savings than I am prepared to spend this summer, I can manage ... at least until my car dies ... or unless some terrible calamity befalls me.

I am not going to go hungry or cold, but I might lose my home, and with it a good bit of the savings I have invested in it, because it will take time to recoup that investment. If that happened I would have to find affordable housing. If I were in the city I would not need a car. If I were in the country I could have dogs.

It usually helps me to look at worst case scenarios.

This time, however, the worst case scenario not only means I will lose the house on the lake I love, but it will have meant that I have spent a year living homeless, and another year living with construction going on around me and dealing with the problems of building. Over two years of my life have been invested as well as the money — invested in a dream that is still not fulfilled. I am still living in an unfinished house on an unfinished lot. In the past two years I have also spent a lot of money unnecessarily on moving costs, and on transfering my life to Quebec.

The past two years have aged me. I am not as well as I was before all this started.

So yes, I have more than someone who is truly poor, but trying to hang onto it is diminishing me and making me feel poor.