A closer look at this 2020 Human development Reports published by the U.N. shows that over 1.3 Billion people live in multi-dimensional poverty. They, usually, have little or no access to potable water, nutritious food, steady electricity, quality education, basic healthcare and shelter. They are also prone to high rates of infant mortality. It's important to note that this lack of access to products that would meet their basic needs is not always because these products do not exist around them. They usually exist, the real issue is that people living in poverty do not have enough resources to afford their needs.
Of all the things poor people can't afford, I think the most expensive, and perhaps the one we need most, is what I like to call The Luxury Of Being Average. The Luxury Of Averageness, for lack of a better term. To put it simply, I think that for poor people to live long and happy-ish lives, and permanently escape poverty, we simply cannot afford to be average at anything we do in our lives.
I'm aware that a lot of people equate being exceptional to being rich and leaving poverty behind. The reality is that this is rarely the case for people born into poverty. Many studies have shown that hard work and generally being exceptional doesn't always translate to better life circumstances and outcomes. My experiences of being born, raised and growing up in Sub-Saharan Africa confirms this theory; I simply do not know any group of people who work harder than poor people.
My experience is that most poor people have to be exceptional in their everyday lives to survive. Thousands of us die avoidable deaths daily. If a minor disease doesn't kill us, our unbalanced diets, poor infrastructure, poor working and living conditions eventually do. We are always one not so random tragedy away from early death.
As grime and alarmist as that may sound, it really isn't an exaggeration. It is our reality - one we must acknowledge before we can make any significant progress on our journey away from poverty. First step to solving any problem is acknowledging the problem, right? Right. This reality of ours is even more grime for those of who are citizens of so called 3rd world countries where welfare services are pretty much non-existent. There is a reason life expectancy rates are so low in these countries.
Contrary to what some rich and privileged people believe, poor people do not enjoy being poor and we are always thinking of and scheming about ways to get out of poverty. It's the only thing we think about as much as we think about where our next meal will come from. Again, this is much more pronounced in 3rd world countries where the gap between the quality of rich people's lives and those of poor people is widest. It is infinitely more difficult to be born into poverty in 3rd world countries and somehow find your way out of it.
Being born into poverty is to always be the best at everything or risk death. It's winning every footrace to the stream so that you can get semi-clean water before others get there and muddy the river; it's a survival of the fittest against natural selection; its being top of every class because the only way you can get quality education is if you won a scholarship. Being born into poverty is risking your life by going to work during a pandemic because hunger would kill you faster than COVID-19 if you don't work and earn your literal daily bread.
Just like rich people, poor people would love a break from working and being exceptional at everything. The only difference is that our lives depend on our exceptionalism. We would love to flunk classes and get average grades. We would love to work average mid management jobs and earn average salaries without worrying about how to foot our bills if we or our dependants got sick. We would love to take educational gap years and travel the world to ''find our true selves and passions'' whatever that means and is.
Poor people would love to live average and unremarkable lives in small towns, age quietly and die peacefully in our old age, yet retain our dignity even after death but these are luxuries we cant afford. We simply can't afford to be average.
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