How much should you give up?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2008
How much should you give up?
352
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 8:35pm

My mother wrote an angry reply to a post on this board. It was deleted, from what I read in her email. I know you will ask how I got into her email, well, I have the password in case something happens to her. I went into it tonight because I was trying to figure out why someone as lovely and kind as my mother tried to take her own life today. In her email, I found a reply to her post. In that reply, she was asked how much this person should have to give to her out of her $250,000 a year. This isn't an attack, it's an answer from someone who knows and loves my mother more than anything in the world. No doubt this will be deleted as well, but here it is until then.

First off, none of what you will be "giving up" out of your $250,000+ dollars will come to her or to anyone like her. It will be going to pay off the deficit for your children, and hopefully for mine, so that they will not get to a point where they would rather die than lose everything they own at the age of 56.

You were talking about losing 12% of $250,000. That is more than my mother made every year. She lost her job, and is about to lose her house. She never had much, but what she had she has lost over the years due to having a chronic illness. She has no retirement, and has watched her home value plummet. If she sold her house tomorrow, she would make less than $30,000 on it. We all know that's not even a year's income, and she cannot collect SS for 6 more years.

So here's my answer to you. You should be willing to give anything necessary to save people like my mother. You should do it because you have it to give. You should do it because it's the right thing to do. You shouldn't begrudge anyone your 12% who has worked so hard, and given so much of her time and energy to others free of charge when they were in need.

My mother taught us to give. Every Christmas, we had to take one gift off of our "want" list (which wasn't very long, since we were poor), and give that money to charity, or to someone with less than we had. There weren't a lot of people who had less than we had, or so I thought. I learned from my mother that I was wrong. She took me to homes where single mothers who had been abandoned by their husbands sat shivering with their children, wrapped in blankets, because they could not afford heat. We gave her a used kerosene heater and a gift certificate for $30 for kerosene. It wasn't much, but she cried when she got it.

Our next stop was to an elderly black man who was blind from cataracts, and had lost his wife just a month before Christmas. My mother brought him a homemade mincemeat pie, because he had loved his wife's so much. She apologized to him, saying she knew it wasn't as good, but it was filled with love.

We gave shoes to children who had none, clothes to women in battered women's shelters so they could go to work, gas money to people struggling just to get to work, and food to families when the food stamps didn't last out the month.

My mother gleaned fields every year after harvest and donated the food to a soup kitchen, and she also drove over 100 miles around our county giving it to the poor and the elderly. She never asked for anything in return. She has literally given the clothes off her back, well out of her closet, to someone she thought needed them more.

Now she lays in a hospital room, fighting for her life, because when it came down to it, nobody would help her. We kids did as much as we could, but it wasn't enough, because we don't have much either. Social services turned their backs on her because she didn't have a job to go back to. She lost her car, and her utilities were going to be cut off. And nobody...NOBODY cared about this woman who has done so much for others during her lifetime.

You obviously don't understand the spirit of giving. That's sad, with Christmas coming up. Too bad you didn't have a mom like mine.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-25-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 8:42am
Yep!
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 11:56am
It doesn't matter how small a percent it is. Wrong is wrong. You have no right to the earnings of others--period. I don't know how we've come to the point in this country where we somehow feel entitled to that which has been earned by others. Is it because we think our needs trump theirs? Maybe that's true but that still does not give us the right to what they have earned. Begging for handouts used to be something people were ashamed of doing. Would I hope to have help were I to have a compelling need? Sure but I wouldn't want that which wasn't given freely.
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-18-2005
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:03pm

could we ask a CL or CM if in fact there was a thread / post deleted where a woman was attacked as described in the story provided here?


maybe that would help some of us determine if we think the story is a fabrication?


if it is true, i am very sorry for your mother, and hope she recovers.


it must be a very sad state when someone choses to stop living as a result of some anonymous comment posted on the internet.


i find it hard to believe that either candidate will improve such a situation....sounds like some pretty uncommon slippage through the cracks to me.


on the other hand, i can see more and more stories of desperate times for everyone if the economy continues to slide....unrelated to who the pres is.

-Kristen

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:06pm

I don't think I've ever met anyone who felt teachers were losers. What an odd concept. What is also odd is to go into a field of study or work knowing what the earning potential is and then proceed to complain when you don't like what you're paid for doing that type of work.

Every job makes a contribution to society.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-06-2003
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:15pm

What is also odd is to go into a field of study or work knowing what the earning potential is and then proceed to complain when you don't like what you're paid for doing that type of work.


That is a very good point.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-15-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:18pm

<>


the problem isnt that you dont know what you are getting into, but prices are rising yet your wages arent.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-24-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:24pm
A nurse practitioner?
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-08-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:25pm
Exactly.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2007
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 12:32pm
Yes and Carter was such an amazing president. We all enjoyed such good times under Carter. The country was never stronger.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-24-2008
Wed, 10-22-2008 - 1:32pm

Carter's failings include he was unwilling and incapable of working with anyone else.

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