Poverty can affect anyone

Poverty – what is it actually? Is poverty a disgrace? Does poverty make you lose your human dignity? Why do so many of us look away when it comes to poverty, until perhaps a stroke of fate suddenly affects us? No one here has to go hungry, our welfare state is still functioning. And yet even here, fewer and fewer people can afford to buy healthy food in a regular supermarket. Due to questionable political decisions, etc., the cost of living is becoming more and more expensive and unaffordable for many. Overpriced rents and energy costs are now plunging many people into debt. Companies are having to close, and many people are losing their jobs as a result. The proportion of people who are classified as the so-called lower class in our country is growing. Even if we in Germany are currently doing well – internationally speaking – compared to most countries in the world. Here, too, the social classes have long been separated. I remember my time at a grammar school in the 1970s. There were almost only rich people's children there. I was the only working-class child. My friends invited me to their birthdays, but always asked me: Please don't tell my parents that your father is just a worker, otherwise I won't be allowed to invite you to my place anymore. - Basically, that hasn't changed to this day. We point the finger at countries like India with its caste system, but basically it's not that different here either. Upper, middle, lower and lower classes are our "poor" who live in socially disadvantaged areas, live in tiny, run-down apartments in areas that people would rather avoid, or who don't even have a home anymore. A good Syrian friend once said to me: "You Germans are strange. Your first question is always: What do you do for a living? You treat you accordingly. Here in Syria, your job and income are not important. You ask the other person: What's your name? Are you and your family doing well? Can I invite you and your family to our place?" - So what is poverty? What exactly do we base it on? Or is poverty not also a real opportunity for the "upper class" to look beyond their ideal world and see what makes people really poor? A class that does not even offer most people the opportunity to ever leave the class they were born into? Who among us is really prepared to support such a person by giving up our usual luxuries and instead helping those in need so that they too can live a dignified life? Let us never forget: poverty can affect anyone. One stroke of fate is enough.