Struggle is the Strongest Catalyst for Motivation, Shame the Biggest Deterrent

“It makes us, or it mars us.” - Othello

So many people open their hearts to me during reporting, telling me things that, sometimes, are difficult to say. The sadness in their lives, the anguish, the frustration of living is often hard to articulate. God knows, I’ve spent my own trying to do just the same thing. It’s why I love writing, and why I chose to become a journalist. I try to tell the stories of other people — stories that, in turn, are the same stories we have all lived through in some way or another. A good story allows us to empathize with the characters and the emotions they feel, taking us through parts of our own past with a fresh perspective. No matter how self-critical a person may be, it is impossible to view one’s life in a context wider than limited individual vision.

Inevitably, I end up tracking stories that feel close to home. Or, at least, end up becoming close to home as understanding deepens. After all, human beings are much more similar to one another than they are different. My recent project has been no exception. I’ve spent the last six months listening to young teenagers and adults describe their struggle to succeed against the odds. Battling poverty, low expectations and day-to-day frustration, their stories are symbolic of something we all can relate to in one way or another. Deep, deep down, the human condition is the same no matter where you come from or what language you speak. Yes, the details may differ, but the meaning is the same.

It Makes Us

I was 17, studying for my A-levels (the British equivalent of SATs) and living in a homeless shelter. The building wasn’t terrible — but we had been moved from our large family home in Hertfordshire, England, to a town 10 miles north. The reasons why are too complicated to explain, but revolved around my mom’s worsening health and our crumbling financial situation. For me, it felt like one day we were living in a 3-bedroom home with a large front and back yard surrounded by evergreen trees, and the next we were being evicted and hauled to the middle of nowhere to share a bathroom with a herion addict. My mom was depressed and my younger sister was feeling lost. I was angry, for the most part, about what seemed like a never-ending struggle just to find a moment of happiness. The three of us leaned on one another for comfort and still found ways to laugh, but as the months passed by it got harder and harder to break the gloom.

I nuzzled into school for comfort and tried to spend as much time as possible away from home. Soon, everyone seemed to be going in their own direction. I couldn’t shake the feeling of hopelessness that pervaded every moment, and I couldn’t handle the fracturing of our close-knit, single parent family. I felt full of shame; I told friends to drop me off on the street corner so that their parents wouldn’t see where I lived.

During that shadowy year in my own life, when it got to the point that I was no longer able to concentrate in school, my art teacher sat me down after class and said firmly and simply: “This is your ticket out of here.”

It was advice handed over in the nick of time. I sat at the train station that day after school, alone in the darkness on an empty platform, my hood pulled over my head to fight the cold, and felt — for the first time in a long time — that things would get better. Maybe it would take a while, but life wouldn’t always feel like this. Change comes, swiftly and silently, and before you know it, you’re somewhere else. From the black sky, soft flecks of snow started to fall, and without a sound, transformed a night night of damp pavements and lonely walks home into something beautiful.

It Mars Us

It’s still hard to recall that year in my mind; it’s shrouded in a dark haze, and when my sister and I talk about it now, she remembers things that seem to be completely missing from my mind. My sister has a degree in Childhood and Youth Studies and is now a teacher’s assistant at a school for children with severe behavioral problems in Bedfordshire, England. She told me recently that shame is one of the most detrimental emotions for a child to feel. Many of the children she works with come from impoverished homes, and the effect it has on their behavior is clear. Feeling shame causes children to either shrink into themselves and away from the world, or to become overwhelmed with aggression toward everything and everyone. It’s flee or fight.

(As an interesting side note, my sister also says that hoodies - as in, the item of clothing - can be interpreted as a symbol of shame. Children who wear hoods often want to hide or defend themselves from the outside. It’s something that I’ve thought about a lot, especially regarding a certain student at one South L.A. school who is frequently shamed in front of the class for not doing his homework and is also constantly being told to take his hood down.)

It’s obvious that poverty can be a negative force for developing children. But what is lesser known is that poverty — in a wider context — can also be a catalyst for motivation. Of course, this is just a personal theory, which I’m going to name, “I-need-to-get-the-hell-outta-here” syndrome.

Sitting on that platform with the snow falling was one of my “I-need-to-get-the-hell-outta-here” moments. I’m sure that my sister and my mom had their own during that time too. I wish I could say that after six months in the homeless shelter everything went back to normal and we lived happily ever after. But this story doesn’t have a traditional happy ending. Life doesn’t work like a narrative does. We can’t tie it in a neat bow at the end because change is constant and irreversible. The events of the past had taken their toll. What I can say is that life was on the upswing from that point for my sister and I. Be it inspiration or fear, the memories of hardship have motivated us both to keep moving onward and upward without looking back. My sister is now living a comfortable home in the English countryside, embarking on a career she adores and was created for. I took it all quite literally, and moved 5,000 miles away to Los Angeles.

This is just a small chunk of a much larger reality; it’s one over-simplified story among the thousands, maybe even millions, that define a life little more than two decades old. But in some complicated way, we owe ourselves to the past — both the joy and the pain of it. It makes us and it mars us.

Related news: Homelessness Causes Behavioral, Emotional and Developmental Problems in Children, UCLA Study Finds.

Tags: homelessness, poverty, shame