There's always someone who is lower in life than our own self. People at the very bottom perhaps can't think very well about anything to even consider their condition. It can become a tad encouraging to anyone with a mind to, so long as we do not dwell overmuch on the lack of a shine to our own shoes. We need to a have a purpose, perhaps even to lift people up along with us and have that same purpose. So it's not good to dwell overmuch on differences.
Eventually, we need to think about discerning enough to actually obtain what we do like in life. Perhaps while we're at that central part of town. Er, especially. People don't have to be starving in open view to eat someone's dad's shoes, but the idea of living on eatting shoes. Doesn't seem like a lot of fun. Add five starving children, all eatting tons of meatballs to the mix and it loses all possible sense. Heart, or something, doing all the thinking in the making of choices.
Sometimes people drink themselves to death in their sixties out of guilt because they never gave a dime towards social security. Was it a fear of communism? Life sometimes seems quite a bit more desperate than it is. If the story has been more desperate than one's own story, we freely borrow theirs to help them make light of it and also try to become a part of it as well, some day. Perhaps not until they are long gone though. Of course you'd rather eat your daddy's shoes than be called desperate. Some people have better luck. And why does it bother anyone that water rolls off a duck's back?