Mediocre, halfway-alive beings, incapable of giving any depth to their lives. Powerless to impose on adversity the richness and intensity of an adventure; on chance, the shape of a destiny.
There's chance and misfortune enough for everybody. That's not what's lacking. The important thing is not that something happen to somebody, but that somebody make something out of what happens to him. There must be someone at the finish line. Someone vulnerable and ingenious, open to experience, and complicated. . . . . .
Life reduces itself to the slogging on step by step, day by day, dime by dime, hardship by hardship. It becomes strung out, it unravels, it hangs in tatters everywhere, Without beginning, or end, or shape. The likes of us have no great dramas. We have nothing but troubles, hassles. And barely the time to think about them. Because our time crumbles away in absurd toil and sordid calculations. Through this all we wend our way, mind focused on the immediate worry, and after this there will be others. Always a chore to finish, kids to wipe, bills to pay. And the fear of being late. The infexible hours of the factory and the office. Limitations evident everywhere. No freedom, no play. Poor people have no influence upon the outcome of things. They are trapped within it.
And when events single them out, they surrender to them, moaning and
complaining.