There is no need to be a beggar in this country, the social welfare is great in taking care of people in need. If there are beggars, then I reckon they are there by choice.
I respect your observation based upon your opinion. Because that is alone is based from your own experience.
Mine, however is different. I may only be 26 yrs old when I saw this. But 2011 was the year that changed the way I see things in life.
Through my own eyes, poverty can happen on anyone.
And it is not by choice. Or for some sort of personal agenda or motive / revenge, against friends, relatives or even families.
This belief alone is not a combined testimony. This is my own hard evidence seen-through fact, as I am about to explain below.
*These people know something we don't.*
In third quarters of 2011 I was (according poverty term and level -
briefly) unemployed for about
six months (until Feb '12) and whilst undergoing nearly 1 & 1/2 years (before the boot) for finding work for another creative agency. 10 total interviews. All failed.
Every morning I hop in and out of different libraries around CBD, Subi, Vincent St and even all the way to the library in Maylands. As I lived together with a sibling and that family communication within my ethnic culture is VERY scrutinisingly involved - I needed to stay
strong, discreet and even
lie to them of my circumstances.
...So what kind of "impoverished" people have I met and talked in these places? I can recall on average throughout my entire day stays at the public library as much as
1/5 (in rough factual figure I would say 1 in every 12 or 14 visitors) of them are what I could consider those who are living in poverty.
Even I was strucked upon helping out this poor old man. Somewhere between within Australian or European accent. Couldn't tell.
It was unbearably hot outside. But from my exact memory he always arrived in a barren collar shirt & torn black suit, fully covered and closed, his two makeshift bags full of clothes, a 12" worn out IBM laptop that looks as though it's from the 90s and carried his old barren portable modem to connect to the internet (presumably the library staff always ignored him).
Now it's easy for us to judge and assume based on an immediate visible fact that these people have tried nothing at all.
From how they smell. From what they look like.
Well just a few words out of this old man pretty much broken that myth.
"I was a succesfull financial planner and an accountant for many, many years."
Those were his words; firmly planted on my head. In person, he looked somewhere between 60 to 70. On his semi-broken laptop screen I remembered he was looking at some stock graphs.
For the next 30 mins he almost did not stop talking about how much he knew about the government communication protocols, their infrastructure, how it works and conspiracy theories and so on.
To be honest; I was highly surprised that he openly discussed so many things up front so much at that point I was getting slightly uncomfortable as I too; caught the attention of other patrons; and one or two people tried to intervene the subject.
I've decided to politely leave the scene altogether.
Long story short - I went out of that library and began reciting what I gather on that unbearably hot sunny day on November 2011.
I was completely wrong about them - these people.
They definitely know something we don't.
And no, since then
I would NEVER, EVER simply conclude that it is simply their free will, their own choice to live like this; to live within the likes of poverty line or "beggars".
Hence, I was completely judgemental and wrong...So from anyone out there who has taken the time to read this; well this is simply a reminder. A reminder that poverty can happen on anyone. That's not a commercial lip service. It's a fact.
And you won't understand until you happen to gain an insight from one of them.
