Poverty: The Cycle of Suffering

--> This was my composed oratorical speech -- as partial fulfillment of requirements in English III.

You wake up on a chilly morning from a restless sleep, then you move a few steps to the kitchen/dining room in your cramped and shabby quarters, only to find out that you have nothing to serve for breakfast, and you have to make do with a cup of hot water so you can leave the saucer filled with last night’s leftover rice for the seven children who will soon wake up.

This is a scenario that majority of the Filipino families find themselves in: Never enough food; never enough water, no comfortable place to live; no everything. None of the things that we count as everyday things, things that we deem normal, common, and unimportant; things we often take for granted.

Now, are we just going to sit here and let this be the only story that every family in our country experience?

Friends, good day.

Aye. In the present, poverty has been the major anti-climax in our fast changing world. It can be considered as a world of no jobs; a world of famine; a world of crimes; and most of all, a world of misery.

Now I wonder, is poverty natural? Is it really an integral part of the tapestry of life? Can it be prevented? Can it be impeded? Can it be erased for all eternity?

The rate of poverty keeps on increasing everyday. Why? Let’s take a look at the people who experience it themselves. I do not think that its basic rationale and its fundamental justification is just mere laziness. I believe that it has to do with the lack of drive, the lack of motivation, the lack of effort to strive and to succeed.

Most people nowadays tend to listen to someone telling them what to do. Maybe they do this, because of the lack of confidence, or maybe just because it is easier to follow than to initiate action. Now, just imagine. Should the first move always be from a different person? Or should it begin with you?

I may presume that another root of it is a government which cannot handle its boundaries well. The governing body of a group is very important, we may even say, vital. It is the one that is being followed, and it is the one being looked up to. Now I ask myself, is our very own government an exceptionally ideal replica of values?

Now, what are the consequences of poverty? Let us imagine being the first child of a brood of eight, in a family living in the desolate squatters area of Brgy. Masambong. What would the family’s priority be? The education of this child or the survival of the family?

Education is important, as all of us know. But then, here comes poverty – messing up everything. Poverty is a cause by which a child doesn’t acquire all his rights, especially his right to a formal education. Instead of studying in the four walls of the classroom, there he is – in the streets, under the heat of the sun, and selling peso fruit candies and cheap cigarettes to the motorists that pass by.

What now then is its implication? An illiterate person is assumed not capable to have a decent job in the future – no decent job, means no salary, no salary means the cycle continues.

How then can this cycle of suffering end? Who then can stop it? Is it up to the government, engaging in fraudulent deals, where money that’s supposed to go to the improvement of our society goes into their already full pockets? Is it up to the parents, who teach the values that today’s generation emulate? The teachers maybe?, the ordinary employee?, Or is it up to each and everyone of us? Acting together, helping each other, and doing what’s right. You decide.