They Hold Our Lives Up. How Do We Thank Them?

--- Ellaeenah JadeFire

There are people who keep our lives running, and we hardly even notice them. The person who sweeps the stairs, fixes the leak, stands out in the rain so we don't have to. The guard at the gate. The silent janitor. They come early. They leave late. They learn our names and what we need, and they do their work quietly, year after year, asking for very little.

And then sometimes, just like that, they are sent away. Not because they did anything direly ‘wrong’. But because a few people with power decided they didn't matter enough to be heard, especially when they dared to ask for what they were owed. And because they dared to say ‘no’ to the powers-that-be.

I keep thinking about how easily this happens here. In our country. There is almost nowhere these people can go for help. Someone can give years of honest, faithful service, and have it all count for nothing the moment it becomes a little inconvenient for someone above them. Those very same people who were repeatedly helped by these very same persons.

Yes, there are people who stand up for them. But these workers have no title, no vote, no real way to fight back. The only thing protecting them was their goodness. And it turns out goodness protects no one against people who have decided they owe you nothing; people whose empty egos matter more to them than the lives of the poor. Those who are unable to, or are unwilling to, know the difference between service and servitude.

What troubles me most is how casual it all is. The people who make these decisions don't feel cruel. They feel they made a sensible choice. They have neat reasons ready for anyone who asks. But are good reasons enough? Has kindness no place in our world anymore?

That's the hard part. Not loud, obvious cruelty, but comfortable people, who never have to fear these hard knocks themselves, calmly deciding the fate of someone who lives with those fears every single day.

But I have lived long enough to learn something. Power is not the same as worth. A title only tells you how much power a person has. It tells you nothing about who they really are. The truest way to know a person’s character is to watch how they treat those who can't fight back. You learn everything about someone not from how they treat the powerful, but from how they treat the people they can so easily hurt.

I have no axe to grind with the ones who made this choice. I am not writing this out of anger at them. But my heart is heavy for the one we could not defend. The trouble is, people who act this way never think it will come back to them. They feel safe. They feel untouchable. But no one is.

That is karma. It is simply how life settles things in the end. Not loudly, not when we expect it, but slowly and surely. What you take from someone carelessly has a way of being taken from you too. Nothing built on another person's broken back was ever meant to last.

So this is for the ones who hold the roof up and are never thanked. The ones shown the door after years of loyalty, by people who never stopped to ask what they were really losing. You were never invisible. You were never small. And one day, those who haven’t noticed it today, they will notice... maybe, then it will be too late. For them. Because karma will have already demanded its price.