I had a sort of mini-epiphany the other day, probably something that I may have had years ago had I a college education with classes in
philosophy. I’m sort of like The Scarecrow when it comes to education, I have no college degree, and am always thinking that maybe someone else who thinks about things, but has a formal degree maybe has a leg up on me. I know it’s not necessarily true, but I’ll admit to having that as a slight character flaw.
In any case, John Steinbeck published Grapes of Wrath 75 years ago. It was 1939. The Great Depression ravaged the country, combined with the dust bowl that stole the top soil from millions of acres of farmland.
1939 was a grand year in Hollywood. It was the year of The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Wuthering Heights, Gunga Din, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Babes in Arms …anyone who has ever watched late night TV is at least familiar with the titles, if not the plots.
It was a good year at the publishing 
houses as well. And then there were None by Agatha Christie. Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Hemmingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, The Man who came to Dinner by Moss Hart and Finnegan’s Wake from James Joyce all joined Steinbeck’s epic on the best seller shelves.
The Grapes of Wrath caused quite a hullabaloo when it was published. A lot of people refused to believe 
that the kind of poverty detailed in the book actually existed in America. After all, it was 1939, and America was an enlightened society, everyone had a chance to be somebody, all they had to do was work hard and prosperity would flow.
By late August of 1939, The Grapes of Wrath was banned in Kern County, California. Many school districts and library boards across the nation removed the book from shelves, and in 1953 it was 
banned entirely in Ireland. It was still controversial in 1973 during a trial in Turkey, and was still being banned here in the US in Kanawha, Iowa in 1980. It was challenged as required reading by students in 1993 in Union City, Tennessee.
The thing is, that poverty did exist in America in 1939 at a level only hinted at by Steinbeck. No amount of glitzy Hollywood movie magic, and all the reading of great novels you could do in 1939 would change the fact that in 1939, there was terrible poverty in the United States.
The thing is, 75 years later we don’t have a great book like The Grapes of Wrath, but we still have grinding poverty. It doesn’t even 
look a lot different than 1939. There are families today who struggle to put a roof over their heads and feed and clothe their children. There is no urban neighborhood that does not have several well-attended food banks.
For all the ‘progress’ we have made as a country and a people, why haven’t we been able to wipe out poverty? Why are there children who go to school hungry? Why do people today willing give thousands of dollars in donations for animals but ignore the hungry bellies of human beings down the street or in the next neighborhood?
Back to the epiphany I mentioned at the top of this article. Most of us simply don’t matter. For the largest majority of us on the planet, it simply doesn’t matter whether or not we were here or not. That is something that takes awhile to wrap my head around, because at the most basic level I matter a whole lot to myself.
I don’t think anyone who lives in grinding poverty does so by choice. I can’t imagine anyone aspiring to a life where there is serious question as to the regularity of meals, hot water and decent toilet facilities. Short of mental illness, no human looks forward to sleeping on the street and pandering for handouts.
But, once you arrive at that bottom rung, the odds are stacked against you and climbing up even one rung on the economical scale becomes a daunting task. Through no fault of your own, circumstance seems to conspire against any upward movement.
Everything in our society costs money, and when you are at the bottom of the ladder, even getting a job becomes a herculean task. To get work you need transportation. You may need a uniform, or at least clean clothing. You may need a certain level of education, you may need child care, you may need decent teeth so you make a good impression. You may even need a fixed address. All of this costs money, and if you are lucky enough to find a job, it’s likely to be minimum wage, and you are likely to have a hard time keeping it because there are so many parts of your life where something relatively simply can cause chaos and your life unravels.
In our world today, where CEO’s now make $273 for every $1 the 
rest of us make, how is it possible for anyone to get ahead? In the United States of America, I believe that in many cases, it is in fact our version of democracy that will eventually be our downfall. We allow too few people too many privileges, and with recent decisions by our Supreme Court, those with money will have far more influence on how the country is run than anyone else with just a vote, but no money.
Most of us regular people who are not immensely wealthy, who aren’t elected to office, who aren’t world leaders have virtually no influence on the world, and whether or not we where even here simply doesn’t matter.
We are lucky if the bubble of our existence spans a full century. My great-grandfather Thomas J. Richardson was born in 1833 and died in 1908. Most of his grandchildren never knew him, and he never 
knew any of his great-grandchildren. The last of his grandchildren that would have had any memory of him at all was my Aunt Grace, who would have been aged five when her grandfather Tom died. Aunt Grace died in 1996, so my Great-Grandfather was pretty lucky in that someone could have carried a personal memory of him as long as 163 years after his birth.
The whole point of this is that often, the world we live in is an awful place, and it takes hard work to carve out our little space. We need to enjoy our time here, make the best of what we have, and not spend quite so much time trying to be like everyone else. It’s OK to aspire to be great, and some of us regular folks make it there. I’m not so sure they have much more fun than we do, but I congratulate them.
I’m contemplating a retirement soon, in fact it could be as soon as weeks away, or as long as a few months, but in any sort of life calendar, certainly in the “soon” time frame. Part of me is scared to give up the certainty of my job, my paycheck, my benefits and the comfort they give me, the predictability.
Another part of me is simply tired of the grind. I don’t know how much time I have left, but I’d certainly like to spend at least some of what I have left doing things I want to do, when I want to do them, and while I’m in reasonably decent health so I can enjoy what I do, free of the regiment of work.
Just some things I’m thinking about recently.