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No Easy Way Out
Why pain is the key to progress
Just over a year ago I started a job which had me visiting around 15 people a week in their homes to find out about their histories, lifestyles, struggles and aspirations. It’s been a real eye opener; I’ve met people in situations I’d never considered possible.
Over the course of around 600 meetings, one thing has become very clear; people who have it the easiest often end up the worst off.
My family was not well off, my mother worked on a sewing machine and my father was a carpenter. But as a child I never realised I was ‘poor’. Another thing I never realised, or even really considered a possibility was that some people in the UK go through the primary and secondary education system and come out with nothing; they don’t gain a single GCSE. My reality didn’t include people with no GCSE’s, because education was simple. School was free, you showed up and there was no way you could possibly get no GCSE’s. All you had to do was pay attention.
How ignorant I was. During training for my current position my boss said ‘politicians should do this job for a month, then they’d get an idea of what the world is really like.’ He wasn’t wrong.
After a year in my current employment I’ve lost count of the number of times somebody I’m sitting with has told me they don’t have any GCSE’s. The first few…
