Recently I heard someone on the news say if people have tools and opportunity they will make things happen. I'd like to think that is true, but I'm afraid that it probably isn't. Not in every case. I think there is still a majority of people who are willing to work, and that's good. I do think that there are a lot who aren't willing to work and while these do not make up a majority, there are too many in this group. I'm usually preachy about not creating "us and them" labels, but there are some obvious classifications among people, and this is one of them: willingness to work. Maybe I'm hypocritical on this point. Maybe it is just as wrong to group people into "criminals" and "law-abiders" or "mental ill" and "normal" as it is label people as willing to work or not willing to work. Maybe there can't possibly be a no-labels society. Even if this is the case we can still control how we view and treat groups which we label as "them." But that's another story. My question is about just how much people are limited by environment and how much they are limited by desire. The context in which I heard the comment about giving people the tools and opportunity and letting them make things happen was in a community with the classification of being the most obese in the country. Overall, the people in this community were collectively larger than the residents of any other community. A woman in the community challenged her neighbors to lose weight and began workshops and exercise programs community-wide to help them. She said that once they were given access to the resources necessary the people were able to make the appropriate changes to remedy their collective health problems. It was a good example of how people who were limited by environment were able to make things happen. I don't want to take away from their success, but I begin to wonder why they weren't able to make changes personally. Why did it take a community organizer to inspire them? Did they really not have access to nutritional information and the ability to walk before the organizer came along? I agree with the statement that people are limited by resources, in some cases, but I think that there is a greater problem of limitation by desire. I congratulate the people who got out and exercised and improved their health. But I don't think it was lack of resources that limited them. I think it was a lack of desire, which was probably a lack of hope. I would suggest that the woman who organized the activities and education introduced hope, not resources. It is hope of achievement that overcomes limitations of desire, which is what I would target as the real culprit. I think we are limited more by our desire than by anything else. When a person has desire they are able to overcome other limitations, like the lack of resources. Maybe not the most smile-inducing example, but look at the ingenuity of inmates in prisons as far as the ideas and tools they manufacture. They are extremely limited in resources, but they can still create weapons and tools to escape prison. Their desire makes up for their limited resources. Again, I know that isn't the happiest example, but it makes the point. We can focus on our lack of resources and opportunities and not get anything done. We can stand outside the burning building and lament "If only we had a hose to connect to this hydrant!" Or, we can do something. Anything. It will always depend on the situation, but if you want to effect a change you usually can to some degree. Hope creates desire and desire can (though not always) overcome limitations on resources, tools and opportunity. We need to take responsibility for our individual selves and "think outside the box." Find new and better ways to do things. Don't wait for someone else to cure the disease or come up with a better process, do it yourself. And then share it.
