Shouts From Down Under

The place you are from; the attributes of your character

People say "I knew where he was coming from", or "She said such and such, and I knew where she was coming from".

Below is a link to a familiar song you probably know. Our daughter will sing it at a school function, in a few days.

This is the long (and better) version of the song...

The Girl from Ipanema



Where are you from? Is it where you were born? Is it what sort of upbringing you had?
Is it where you learned life lessons, and your character was developed? Is it your local surroundings, people, landmarks or even the weather?

What is it that makes up the essence of "where people are coming from".

Because this thing about understanding someone else, or "getting" them, or knowing where they are coming from in whatever example of conversation, can have a unifying or dividing effect between individuals, and groups.

It's a reality. It's as real as it gets.

I have no qualifications and have done about 7 seconds of research into this subject. So that doesn't really give me much grounding to base any opinion on, or be trusted to write about it with reliable knowledge.

Well, that is except my own feelings and personal experience. There is one instance that springs to mind immediately; that of humour.

People have different ideas about humour. What one person finds hilarious and gut chuckling, another might feel is not just unfunny, but frivolous and inappropriate. Some might find a person's humour offensive or puzzling.

While I don't deliberately make offensive jokes, and know what it means to be sensitive and have consideration for others (ie not be selfish), I seem to have a brand of humour that is limited to very close relatives who I grew up with, on the farm.

Life was tough there, and while we enjoyed a loving family, survived, ate well and were relatively healthy, we all seemed to develop a special brand of dry humour. This humour, I believe, is not understood by some, particularly those who have never had to battle. There is financial hardship, but there are a lot of other things that can contribute to a unique upbringing. Isolation, upbringing, parents, grandparents, relatives, and those other events and incidents we don't like to name, but all know that they were traumatizing disasters.

Yes, people say all sorts of things and claim to have had it tough. And perhaps they have. But you can pick them a mile off, the ones who really haven't had it that bad financially. They try. They really feel they've been badly off. But they are pretenders. (Yes I know, the Four Yorkshiremen style trying to outdo others in the poverty stakes)

But they don't fully understand the meaning of really poor. That lack of money year in year out, when you had to give up on dreams, give up on any status or peer admiration. People blame you for being poor. Sometimes bad management can bring about this poorness. But there can be other factors that gradually grind people down into poverty, not of their choosing, and not their fault.

Whatever it is, poorness from birth, and the characteristics it can work into your personality, cannot be faked.

Someone has not been poor when they are quick to criticize someone else for some imagined fault that really boils down to just plain old lack of cash.

That same critic has never known that situation where they couldn't just go and buy item A or spare part B.

They don't understand that you cannot do things sometimes. You just CANNOT. You don't have the funds. You have to change your life, make decisions and lower your expectations, to get through or out of that situation.

Sometimes it's called lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.

I'm risking being labelled a "crying poor" person here, but my point is, these things from long ago shape who you are today.

I feel that people who have known true want, known having to ask others for help all the time, known the humbling of receiving from others (and it is appreciated no doubt), these people will grow to be wiser, more tolerant, more understanding of other's failures and bad decisions than if they grew up with money. Even a little.

There is a difference.

So, where do you come from, and do people understand "where you're coming from"?

It's a strange thing, but I find that even though I've known a life like this, and yet been helped so much and so many times, I still retain a ridiculous pride. This pride is not the good sort where you are glad you succeeded. It's a malignant type where you get sick of having to thank people, sick of being grateful, sick of looking lazy and unmotivated in front of your grown children, sick of others coming to help that make everything look so easy (and what was your problem that you couldn't just DO the job right now?).

People conveniently forget that you can't do anything without the currency in you pocket or bank, no matter how motivated you might feel inside.

Sparky