Is there a Point to This?

Because sometimes I feel there is no point. I love my children. I love my family. But life sometimes is very hard to live. So much pain in the world. So much hardship to overcome. Even if you do the right thing you will eventually meet up with obstructions that make you question your destiny.


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Like you go to college. All your young life maybe you felt like you were a "rescuer". Whenever someone picked at the kid whose mother smoked crack and refused to wash his clothes (resulting in the kid having a smell) you took up for him. After all, he was quiet and he never did anyone wrong. But then they said you like him and you said no way. You were only eight. THis is still the time that boys and girls are mortal enemies. SO yeah you want to help people. So you major in Social Work. You keep your minimum 2.8 gpa. You land your internship with the homeless shelter. You feed countless down and outers in the Greater Metropolitan Area of fill in the blank. You write your "personal response essay" to the experience and you finally graduate with a degree in Social Work.

Then you look for jobs. You have your transcript with a 3.2 gpa plus three letters of recomendation from your internship coordinator, SWK 450 Professor, and your Pastor respectively. You apply to three different county social service agencies. You go through the mechanized panel interview for two separate social service agencies. You wait for three weeks. On the second week you realize you haven't heard anything. Panic begins to set in. So you tell yourself to apply to jobs that are in your field but don't pay as well. You go to the local women's shelter and find there is vacancy for a third shift intake specialist. It pays only eight dollars an hour. You tell yourself it is a stepping stone and apply anyway, thinking you are a shoe-in with your impressive Social Work degree. But then the miracle occurs! You get a call from Acme County DSS and they offer you the job of Income Maintenance Caseworker I. YAY!!!!!

You will be paid 25000 a year since you are entry level. You must past the assessment administered after completion of each training module. THere are eight training modules which are done eight consecutive weeks for the training of administering food stamps.

You are elated.

You tell your mom you got a State job. Your mom calls all your aunts and tell them how much job security you have and how now her daughter will know everybody's business in the whole town who has "hit the skids".

But sadly you find out that the only people you can help are people who are completely helpless. You cannot help the single mom who makes 21500 with two kids who was recently separated from her husband. She "makes too much" according to the Federal Poverty guidelines for a family of three. ANd the Federal poverty line does not recognize expenditures such as paying student loans, exorbitant rents, and fuel costs. SO you must tell her she and her kids cannot get food stamps. You refer her to Urban Ministries where she can get a bag of bananas, pork and beans and some raisins.

Was it all for naught? TO think that you would feed everyone in the county with your computer screen. Or are you a marionette in the grand play called the US WELFARE SYSTEM. You know that the girl who get 700 dollars in food stamps (who has five kids) will never get a job. But she and many others like her are the only ones that can easily qualify because they have zero income. All or nothing.

No middle ground.

So what to do? You're burned out. It no longer even bothers you that you can only help the most indigent folks. You become a robot. You don't even make eye contact with the clients anymore.

But you notice at night when you are filing away your quarterly client reports your sense of purpose has diminished. You feel down. Hopeless. Is there a meaning. How can I make a difference?