Connection: King Lear and Poverty

I have to admit, Shakespeare is hard to read sometimes; the complexity and hidden meaning around every corner, the puns you don't get the first time, the characters that don't make sense, the language that just can't be English. But the way that people keep recreating his works in new ways, they way his old tales are being turned into modern stories, is illuminating, and it shows the utter timelessness of his creations. It's not even just stories, I honestly believe that, if you look hard enough, you can see views on real world problems hidden beneath the sonnets and sexual innuendos. So far, in Lear, I see current issue after current issue after current issue manifesting itself in Lear and Cornwall, the Fool and Cordelia, Gonerial and Edgar. Could Shakespeare really see the future? Or did he just have a time machine...?

One such issue is poverty. When Lear split up his kingdom and said that he will spend time living with each of his daughters, anger raged inside of me. First of all, I will just say that, "...a nation divided cannot stand," and let Abe be the voice of reason here. But, more infuriatingly, he's just being lazy; he doesn't want to be responsible for his land anymore, so he wraps it up in bubble wrap, shoves it in a box, throws some packing peanuts in, gets some old wrapping paper out of the closet, makes a cute little present out of it all, with a bow and everything, and ships the pieces off to his daughters' castles, where they each eagerly open their neatly wrapped presents on the dinner table, ignorantly unaware of the ticking bomb they've received.

Today, people acknowledge that people are starving all around the world but they either, put on a sad face when they see a Christian Children's Fund commercial and then do absolutely nothing, or send the problem, and their conscious, off to someone else with a little bit of money. This issue too, comes down to laziness. We don't want to put the work into end poverty and hunger because it's just too hard; we say it can't be done. Here's an idea: stop shoving money in peoples' faces and start showing them how to use it. Yes, you, and yes, it won't be a walk in the park. Money obviously doesn't solve anything because there's still a little girl in Ghana who's going to sleep cold and hungry tonight; the only way to get anywhere in life is hard work. The only reason we say it's impossible is to make ourselves feel better because we, so far, have failed.

Just like Lear, who goes through hell because of his decision, the world, as a whole, will never become an Eden, and everyone will never be truly at peace, until we can fix this problem. Lear's laziness may have cost his personal comfort, but poverty and hunger go much farther, to people on every corner of the globe, people of every age, every race, every religion, sex, and background. Lear's story is a omen, a foreshadowing of what's to come. But more, it's a plea: please don't be as stupid as Lear, get off you butt and face you life, and all that comes with it, be it the good or the bad, head on.