Reflecting on Class Disparity

I know a kind man in coastal Florida. He is a true friend of mine–a truly resilient soul. The type of person to value other souls as higher than his own.

He works two jobs, and his girlfriend works at a casual restaurant. They have a two-bedroom apartment, one room dedicated to her Twitch streaming. Some might call it irresponsible. But even if every decision they made was perfect, they are one event away from collapse.

He makes hardly enough to cover rent and bills now. Even if he were to downsize to a typical one-bedroom apartment in the area, he would have only meager savings left after rent, utilities, and food.

In both paths, he struggles. He treads the line between collapse and survival.

His hours are unstable, depending on the labor percentage each day.

He will never retire. He will only stop when his body fails.

He did not choose to be born, to have a body that aches and breaks, but if anything happens to it, he will collapse.

We failed him. We failed everyone like him.

Yet we lie to ourselves, believing we are somehow better than them, only because we chose a different career path.

We lie to ourselves, believing we are better than him.

We lie to ourselves, believing we are more deserving of stability.

We lie to ourselves, believing his work is not meant to provide a dignified life.

We lie to ourselves, believing he deserves this.

As a society, we failed the typical service worker. It is delusional and unjust to believe they deserve this instability, when it was our failure that created it.

Why am I worthy of being able to comfortably pay rent, bills, and food–and not him?

Although I am still at the mercy of our healthcare system, I will mostly be okay. Why not him?

Perhaps the greatest moral failure is to believe that those jobs are not meant to provide a simple standard of living. It reduces human beings–people navigating joy, sorrow, and ache–into something lesser.

It reduces a living soul into something less than.

Knowing this, we must reject the idea that we somehow earned safety while others did not. We must reject the idea that our comfort is deserved. We must reject the idea that we are greater than our fellow humans.

Because to see suffering clearly and remain untouched is to participate in the very system that causes it. If we truly see, we cannot look away. Not without losing something essential.