Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX

Around a month ago Sidney Snoeck (who maintains the excellent photo blog My Sari Sari Store) posed a challenge to my blog entry Mariannet Amper and the Gospel of Hopelessness.

In that blog entry, I posited that the “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer” mantra was part of a “gospel of hopelessness” that poisons people’s minds into believing that there is absolutely no way for them to rise up above a life of poverty.

In turn, Sidney pointed out an article from Newsweek describing how, in many countries – even our more progressive Asian neighbors with so-called “tiger economies” – the gap between the rich and poor are widening, with the already-rich hogging any economic gains that a country achieves, leaving the poor to settle for the scraps from the dinner table which they fight for their lives for.

It was very painful for me to read that issue of Newsweek, and it boggled my mind as to how to answer Sidney’s challenge. I was in a quandary as to how view the situation – for every story of a successful individual borne out of poverty and raised in poor families but are now in the upper echelons of corporations or own businesses, there are a thousand stories of despair and failure in the filthiest of slums and squatters’ areas.

How do I resolve that? I knew that somewhere, somehow, there was an answer to this contradiction.

Then finally, I read about Gilbert, and posted my rather controversial take on his story.

Education has been the traditional answer to the scourge of poverty. It is the silver bullet that many believe to be the true ticket out of subsistence living. Finish college, find a secure job, perform well, get promoted, receive raises, and you’re on your way to becoming big. Gilbert’s story belies that – despite finishing an IT degree, he went abroad taking on a menial job more suited to a person who had finished high school.

While taking a job overseas is absolutely fine, he totally wasted his education in a field that promises big bucks and ample opportunities both within the country and abroad.

On the other hand, there is the story of Mariannet Amper. Although her alleged suicide is undergoing reinvestigation, assuming that her suicide note is true, she is a case of a person who has given up long before she could even start. The irony is that there are tycoons that have started from exactly where she was, and have made it big 40, 50 years down the line.

So now I ask, what was the difference between Gilbert, Mariannet and the big business figures we know that hadn’t finished college, and actually started from poverty-stricken backgrounds – Socorro Ramos of National Bookstore, Henry Sy of SM, John Gokongwei of Robinson’s, Julie Gadiongco of Julie’s Bakeshop to name a few?

Is it just a matter of, 40, 50 years? Was that world really so different — one that was devastated by war — that opportunity was just there right for the picking? If that were true, why isn’t every one of our grandparents filthy rich by now? Is it that the rich weren’t “preventing” the poor from getting richer back then?

There is no question that the answer to Sidney Snoeck’s challenge is no. Mariannet Amper cannot possibly have gotten out of poverty. If her suicide note is to be believed, she simply didn’t have the fight within her to have what it takes to get out of her rut. The same goes with Gilbert – his choice of career – or lack thereof – clearly shows the inability to take advantage of opportunities presented to him.

However, for a person who has both characteristics – that is, the relentlessness by which they refuse to succumb to adversity in their situations, and the ability to spot and exploit opportunities in every situation, whether positive or negative, being successful is inevitable. Throw in some talent, and you’ve got an achiever. Throw in a lot of guts, and you’ve got a surefire winner — rich preventing poor from taking a share of the pot or not.

There are a lot of talented people out there who don’t have the guts, or a lot of people who have the guts but do not or do not know how to hone their talents, and unless these change, it is unlikely that they will even be able to rise up to the nearest higher socio-economic stratum.

Some people will argue that there’s also luck — that some people are extremely lucky to have had certain opportunities in their lives. I, however, would argue that luck is a talent — it is no different from the ability to spot opportunities and make the best use out of them. For example, there are cases wherein people rose out of poverty because they had a benefactor — who gave them a scholarship and saw them through their education and eventually employed them or helped them put up a business. While some would think that the person is extremely lucky, it is unlikely that he will find that luck had he been not recognized by the benefactor by performing well in school.

Fortunately people are not born with these characteristics. These traits — skill, opportunity spotting, risk taking, and I dare say even luck — are learned, whether through others or through one’s life experiences.

In the end, it is totally up to an individual if they decide to fight back, or if they will believe that they do not have what it takes to rise up to the challenge of life.