🌑 WHEN HARD TIMES MAKE YOU HARDER AND WHY THEY SHOULDN’T

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My wallet fainted, my characters panicked,

There’s a quote doing the rounds lately, mostly shared by people who’ve lived through real struggle. People who know what it’s like to stretch a tenner until it screams. People who’ve stood in the petrol station doing mental maths like it’s an Olympic sport. The quote goes:

“Call me crazy, but an extra dollar per gallon for a few weeks seems like a small price to pay for removing a government hellbent on nuclear destruction.”

And look, I understand fear.

I understand wanting the world to make sense.

But when I see people who’ve lived hardship suddenly acting like hardship is a noble sacrifice for everyone else, something in me stops cold.

Because if anyone should understand the cost of struggle, it’s the people who’ve carried it.

If anyone should know what that extra dollar means, it’s the ones who’ve counted coins at the pump.

The ones who’ve stretched dinners.

The ones who’ve prayed the car makes it to payday.

The ones who’ve lived the kind of life that should make you softer, not harder.

So why pretend it’s nothing now?

And while this conversation is happening online, American lives are actually being lost.

Not in theory.

Not in political fan fiction.

In real time, families are getting phone calls that break them in half.

Expats are stranded in a conflict zone, terrified, exhausted, clutching their passports like rosary beads, praying for a way home.

Meanwhile, people back home are posting slogans like they’re leading the charge from the safety of their living rooms.

I’m the one who doesn’t even believe in God

Yet somehow I’m the one standing here saying,

“Maybe human suffering shouldn’t be a bargaining chip.”

Meanwhile, some of you — the ones who used to say “God will provide” — are now shrugging at the very people who need that provision most.

If you truly believe in a God who sees everything, then by your own logic, He’s watching you now.

Not the poor.

Not the stranded.

Not the grieving.

You.

The ones cheering on hardship as long as it lands on someone else’s doorstep.

And here’s where Ballyfermot comes in, because I didn’t grow up there.

I moved there at 27.

I raised my son there.

I learned my adulthood there.

And those years shaped me in ways I didn’t expect.

Ballyfermot taught me that community isn’t a slogan, it’s a lifeline.

It taught me that you don’t kick people when they’re down.

You don’t romanticize struggle — you survive it.

You don’t forget where you came from once you’ve caught your breath.

And you never, ever cheer for someone else’s pain.

Living there sharpened my bullshit detector to a razor’s edge.

It taught me to read the room, read the people, and read the truth.

It taught me that compassion isn’t a luxury — it’s a responsibility.

And it taught me that if you’ve lived through the fire, you don’t hand out matches.

So here’s my take, plain and simple:

If there is a God, He’s not sorting out the people struggling.

He’s sorting out the people who forgot what struggle feels like.

And if there isn’t

Then all we’ve got is each other.

So maybe stop cheering for the kind of pain you once prayed to escape.

✨ Closing Thought and a Call to Action

If you’ve known hardship, let it make you kinder.

If you’ve survived struggle, let it sharpen your empathy, not dull it.

And if you’ve ever been the one counting coins at the pump,

don’t forget the people who still are.

Compassion isn’t weakness.

It’s memory.

And memory is what keeps us human.