Many times, I have heard Bush's critics state that he was "born on third base, thinking he hit a triple". The idea, of course, is that he considered himself a self made man, when in fact, he took for granted many advantages he had that weren't available to just anyone.

The thing is, it's not just something BUSH does, it's something we ALL do. Some time back, I wrote an article explaining that one of the flaws in our approaches to the poor was assuming they had the same upbringing we did; ie, knowledge of basic housekeeping, budgeting, etc. The simple fact is, many don't, and it's presumptuous to assume that they did.

If you are reading this, I can readily assume a few things about you and guess at others. First, you were born more privileged than the vast majority of this world's population. While you may not be accessing the internet at home, you live in an area where you are fortunately provided with places where you can access the internet. As I look at the statistics of areas where people have accessed my site, I can see that I can safely rule out almost half the world's population (none of these hits come from China or India, the VAST majority of these hits come from Western Europe, America, Australia and the South Pacific). Therefore, you probably weren't born in the unfathomable conditions of a place like Calcutta or sub Saharan Africa. That means an accident of birth, a condition over which you had NO control, caused you to be born in a place where you had access to enough education to be able to log on a computer and read the material at this site.

But there are things I CAN'T know about you, and would be presumtuous to assume. Nor, in fact, can you know these things about me unless I share them with you. These are the intangibles: support (moral or otherwise) of extended family or faith community, health and ability, and a number of other various factors including the cost of living in your area, the availability of public transportation, etc. All of these things can greatly affect how hard you have to work to be somewhat successful in life.

While it may be easy, it may be convenient to judge someone, the old Native American adage about not doing so until you've walked a mile in their shoes definitely applies here. By making premature judgements and speaking out of turn, you can cause more hurt than you intended. Sure, you can point back to your own life, your own successes and assume that, because you did it, everyone else can/should be able to do the same. But you simply don't know, and WHEN you don't know, perhaps it's better to remain silent.