Growing Up without Big Brother

I feel inspired to write about growing up, I grew up in a family of 8, my parents and 6 children in a 2 bedroom house. During my teenage years this brought me shame and embarrassment. I can remember going to junior high and realizing how little we had and that most girls did not share a room with their brothers. Thankfully my Father added a bedroom and garage when I was in my teens , so when the older kids moved out I got my own room, I felt special! Our family was a hard working family and in our neighborhood we were well respected. My Father taught us your name was everything and should never be taken for granted.
I want people of this generation to realize that by yesterdays standards everyone today is wealthy. I hear talk of the poor and oppressed and I see everyone walking with a phone stuck to their ear. By and large the word poor is not what it was. How can people be poor and obese? The two cannot co-exist. Poor people in our neighborhood ate beans, for most every meal and no one was fat. Neighbors took food to families that struggled when they stopped in for a visit. Most people had a TV, not one in every room. We didn't always have all the things necessary to play ball , but if we brought our resources together we could play ball in the field next to my house. My family only had one car for most of my life, my Mom would drive Dad to work and pick him up when he got off. This was the condition of most people in my neighborhood. We had no idea we were poor.
Today people act as if everything advertised on TV should be in every home. People act as if they are entitled to these things. My thoughts are work is good for the soul and no job is beneath me if I am hungry. I believe our government is creating a dependency that is crippling our society. Government has now become the big brother we have feared. If people are given long term hand outs they begin to depend on them and lose the fire in the belly that picks a man or woman up by the boot straps and tells them do whatever is necessary till you find what you are looking for. Hunger gets one up and out to find a job! Complacency tells one that we should take it from someone else because he has more than he needs! I want more for our people than standing in a line waiting for a handout and then going home sitting in front of the TV and doing it all over again when we have consumed it ! What ever happened to working your way up from the bottom. What ever happened to necessity becoming the mother of invention?
We as a people are experiencing the greatest poverty ever . We have poverty of our souls and minds. We are being spoon fed every excuse in the book as to why we need a bigger and greater government to save us when in fact we need to save ourselves. As I reflect the lack of things does not constitute poverty but the state of mind , heart and soul constitute real poverty. I was in fact a very rich little girl growing up because I had a family who believed I was more than the things that surrounded me. I was wealthy because i was told I could be anything in life I wanted, if I could dream and work toward that goal, I could achieve it. SO in truth poverty is a state of thought. People who are told they need the government long enough believe it. People who are told take and give nothing in return will soon become consumers and know nothing about producing and restoring and giving. Poverty is more about what we believe than what we have ! I pray for our nation that someone will be the voice that stands against the tide of more entitlement and less personal responsibility ! Life as I knew it as a child helped shape me into the woman I am today so I believe less is more than enough !