Learn to understand others

Imagine, for a moment, waking up in a differ­ent place, like a room with dirty walls and rats running along the floor boards, or a very large room with a canopy bed and an exquisite chandler hanging from the center of the room's ceiling.

Then you find out that you are a different age, maybe a different gender.

You might discover you have schizophrenia or an eating disorder that is not a result of you thinking you are fat, but your fam­ily is too poor to provide food or you have an over­abundance of food that you consume too often.

Whatever life it is you wake up to, it turns out that this life at one time was only a scenario, one where you might have felt sorry for the person liv­ing it, or even surprised people actually live that way.

Either way, imagine hav­ing to live this life for a week or if you can even survive depending upon the circumstances.

Socio-cultural and socio-economic statuses are factors that have shaped us throughout our lives as of now.

If unfamiliar with these terms, socio-cultural and socio-economic deter­minants are fixtures in our lives such as: place of birth, type of parents, social class, gender, social expectations such as mar­riage, children, etc.

There are so many fac­tors of our lives that influence us, and many of these are out of our control.

Many people I know automatically assume that people who are homeless are alcoholics, drug ad­dicts or just bums - but in reality there are hon­est, hard working people whose lives have been turned upside down by factors they could not control.

Also, if you really think about it, drugs and alco­hol. Factors that can force a person to spin out of control.

It is not always just a self-esteem problem for someone's life to spin out of control, but also some­thing that has physically, emotionally, and cogni­tively taken a toll on one's body.12