If you have a spouse and children, you don’t know what it is like to carry the weight of responsibility for your children and for yourselves all on your own. And it is a good thing that you don’t. You don’t know what it is like to live with the constant fear of shortage, with the constant worry of getting fired or falling ill, or with the constant worry of any unexpected financial expense when you have no one to lean on, to consult with and to share the burden with. So if you don’t know what it is like, thank your lucky stars but don’t forget those who do need your good thoughts.
It is difficult enough to be a battered woman or a single mother or a woman who did not get married and needs to survive in this uncertain and unstable reality all alone or with her children. It is certainly difficult enough. But we can’t help everyone who is in distress.
Despite all our sympathy to those people whose luck has failed them, we cannot offer everyone a life of comfort, we can’t help everyone build a family, we can’t promise everyone work or livelihood. In addition to that, many of us are also experiencing difficulties of our own: we also worry about our future, we also worry about our livelihood, about the condition our health, and we also live with the constant question of “what will be”.
But there is one thing which is difficult for people in distress no less than the distress itself: the feeling that no one cares. And there is no wonder. We are a heartless society, and apathy reigns in a heartless society, and the common state of mind is “it’s not my job to do”, “they should go to social services”, “I have enough problems of my own”. This is a society in which every person takes care of their own self, and it is no wonder that whoever finds himself or herself in financial trouble can expect to be ignored. And it hurts.
So yes, there isn’t anything we can do to ease the financial survival of each and every person. But there is something we can do: we can think about those who do not have. We can remember those who don’t have as we sit comfortably in our comfortable homes, when we go for vacation, when we buy different things for ourselves and when we sit by the table on special occasions. And when we complain about how difficult we have it, we can ask in our hearts for them to have what we have.
You might be thinking: who needs our thoughts? No one can buy groceries with thoughts. Actual help is needed here, and that is exactly the government’s job. And you are right, of course. But if we all pray for everyone, in our hearts, the gates up above will open up and something wonderful will happen: a new society of mutual responsibility will begin to emerge, instead of our heartless one.
Is it the ‘end of days’? No, because in a society of mutual responsibility too there is shortage, and in a society of mutual responsibility there are also those who have more and those who have less. But in a society of mutual responsibility no one is discarded, and there is a door open for everyone.
This is all that battered women and single mothers need, and this is what every one of us needs: to live in a society in which everyone gives what they are able to, and everyone receives what they need.
This is exactly what Granot Center offers: actual help in providing for those who lack, as well as the giving the sense that there are many who care. And there is no doubt that your place is here with us too.