[fintstone]

Originally Posted by masraum

A lot of that is based on the personality of the person in the situation. To greatly simplify things. If a person grows up in a bad environment (poor, abusive, substance dependencies, etc...) there seems to be 2 or 3 main results.

1 The person perpetuates the environment. They act basically the same, having learned from and emulating how they grew up.
2 The person becomes a victim and can never let go of and get past the issues that they went through.
3 The person sees what is going on and thinks "this is crap, I'm not going to perpetuate this. I'm going to rise above or get out of this and make something better of myself." This is, I believe, the rarest of the three. I've seen it several times, but it's far from common. I believe a big part of it is based on the personality that is intrinsic to the individual.

Congrats for being one of the few #3. Unfortunately, while that's an option for everyone, it's in same ways, probably also not. Not everyone can be an olympian. In a similar way, not everyone has the personality to overcome, but will deal differently.

Having been poor (without the velvet glove of low expectations and the quenching of any "hunger" for success/opportunity by receiving income based social welfare) should just make one stronger. More able to delay gratification, live frugally when necessary, and do the hardest physical labor imaginable...for about 20 hours a day. I have never worked anywhere in my life where anyone worked longer and harder than I have. Hard work was/is easy...as I had done that since I was a child. All I needed to do was to learn to work smarter and make better choices. That stared with recognizing that everyone I knew worked very hard and yet were very poor. Libraries are free and if you take a low-level job and bust your butt...you move up. Each new job, you can do the same. The same with college. It is not hard to take one course while working...then two...pretty soon you are going full time...but when you are paying your own hard-earned dollars, you are not foolish enough to take courses that will not result in your getting a better job/more pay. I wanted to write poetry, but took engineering (while I worked 3 jobs to pay for it).