A Relative Term
by Joe M. Young
May 2013

If you look at any person who you would describe as well-adjusted, you will see that life in general is going their way. I used to think that people who have nice, happy and stable lives had those lives because they were well-adjusted. I thought that about myself when my life was like that.

But I see now that being well-adjusted is a product of that life rather than the other way around. If you look at the movie Trading Places with Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy my point is crystal clear and it’s absolutely right. In that movie, Dan Akroyd works for two brothers who are very wealthy by manipulating stocks. They make a bet for one dollar on whether or not a person is a product of their environment.

So through a series of incidents that the brothers control, they discredit Akroyd to the point that he is penniless and in jail and homeless. At the same time they take Murphy from being a homeless street hustler and put him into the life Akroyd had. Suddenly Murphy’s life is well-adjusted and Akroyd’s is the opposite.

It’s easy to be well-adjusted when your life is smooth and you are in a good place financially, relationship-wise and every other way. You almost cannot help but be well-adjusted. On the other hand, if your life is a struggle each day to pay the bills, most times that causes you to not have good, lasting relationships. And when you don’t have the stability of a steady relationship, of course many other facets of your life follow suit. It’s what they mean when they say, “slippery slope”. It starts going downhill and it’s nearly impossible to stop that slide.

All of this speaks to the truth of the matter that people who live in poverty for the most part are good, honest people. That’s because they are the same as people who live better, stable lives with the main exception being that life has taken a turn for the worse at one time. Usually through no fault of their own.

This should be taught in school as a life lesson so people will better understand our society as a whole. That would make for less of a dividing line between the haves and the have-nots.

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