guillermone previously said:

I see your point and although I agree somewhat. However, I have both been poor and have had the opportunity to experience wealth. Nevertheless, maybe I was never poor enough to understand true poverty, nor rich enough to consider myself wealthy.

However, I do remember as a child how my parents experienced extreme difficult economic times and on many occasions had to scrape up enough money to feed the family. I can’t really say or recall that we ever went hungry, but it was not unusual for us to go to bed after eating a watered down soup and stale bread. "El estomago se engana con cualquier cosa," my mother use to humorously say as a pacifier and psychological method to fill in any stomach voids we might still have left. Eventually we rose up out of that until we became average middle class. Subsequently, my parents divorced and lead separate lives but oddly enough neither remarried until they were both late in years.

With time my father became a very successful business man while my mother remained employed earning a modest income. She lived from pay check to pay check and just made enough money to get by while still dependent on child support income my father provided to fill in financial gaps.

As an inquisitive teen-ager, I noticed a difference, but could never understand the reasons why my mother and relatives on her side of the family were just economically average, although outstanding in many other ways, while on my father’s side were relatively well off and successful people.

I remember how my mother who came from a dirt poor, poverty stricken family, who experienced true hunger during the Trujillo regime, always bragged and boast and looked up to my Dad's material success. She made him seem almost surreal and would tell stories to leave us in awe, yet his economic background was equal to that of my mother. The image I had of my father was almost magical, further reinforced when I spent summers with him on either his beach house on the north coast or mountain property in Jarabacoa.

I clearly remember as a highly impressionable child my first trip back to the DR, how my mother made a big fuss to prepare my luggage, called the taxi for the airport made sure everything was in order. It was like she sent me away, off to see the Wizard of Oz. My first recollection upon arrival was getting picked-up at the Punta Caucedo airport in a brand new, jaw dropping automobile and having the car door opened by my father's personal driver. This was during the days when horse drawn buggies, mules and buhoneros were a common street sight all over the country, where every one of them shared and competed for space in the crowded Dominican roadways.

My point is this and reason why I come to the conclusion that it all starts with the mind and the attitude one has towards life. While my mother was your typical happy go lucky Dominican, who took life in stride and paid no mind to life’s vicissitudes, my father was driven, had no patience for mediocrity and constantly strived for perfection. My mother was laid back, would never negotiate price, while my father fought to save every last penny spent, a ball buster when ever he bought and had to pay for something and his bank account reflected that.

My mother on the other hand, would never check her receipts, while my father would bring out his calculator and tally up the total, just to make sure he was not cheated out of one cent. My mother believed in learning to be satisfied and feeling rich with whatever God gave us, while my father thought that such ideas are those who are conformists and mediocre.

The bottom line is that we all have the potential to beat poverty. All men are created equal, but not equal to what is planted in the mind. The Oz never really did give nothing to the Tin Man that he did not already have, but he made him change his mind to believe in himself and because of that overcame obstacles.

Both my parents had different outlooks on life and the end result is obvious. However, today both my parents are widow and widowers in their late 70’s. My father is still economically well off, constantly surrounded by people, works 24/7 but feels lonely and miserable, while my mother has just enough to live a simple, but comfortable life and appears to be overall happy and satisfied. Now which of the two really beat poverty? While my father did a much better job materially, spiritually can be considered a person who remains poor.

I guess we must better define what is poverty and the remedy for this ailment. If being loved, having a roof over your head and 3 square meals a day enough, well then find. My mother thought if you had these three things you should consider yourself fortunate. However, not my father and what still confuses me about my mom, was that for a person who believed in this simple principle, she still looked up to my father as someone special, yet in the end my mother was really the more special one of the two. Then again are not mothers always that some one special ?