When I was growing up, I learned the Scarcity paradigm. I think pretty much everyone I knew learned it. It basically said 'there is a limited amount of X available, so choices must be made'. I think your parents understand that world.
A few years ago, I was told another paradigm existed. People called it Abundance.
I wondered about this- I mean it sounds a little fruity.
People who talk about claim the world is full of abundance, that you can have abundance in your life if only you think the right thoughts seem a bit strange. Especially if you've ever found yourself homeless and eating out of garbage cans. But that is another story for another time. <g>
I spent the better part of three years trying to understand what this world of abundance might look like, how it might work. After about two years, I started noticing that I always had more food than I could eat.
Most times, people seemed genuinely interested in helping me, even though I'd done nothing out of the ordinary for them.
After three years, the pieces of the puzzle came to rest.
A story sometimes told about God showing a newcomer around gives a clue. In one room are a group of people, all of whom are gaunt and disheveled, seated quitely around a table with platters of food before them. Tied to their arms are long spoons, and it seems they cannot get the spoon into their mouths. They go hungry despite the bounty before them, suffering in silence.
In the next room are a group of people rotund, jovial and chatting about this and that. The same long spoons are tied to their arms, but it seems in this room they've discovered their spoons can reach the mouths of their mates.
My apologies for butchering the story, but it takes so many words to develop the picture and concept so simple.
From my search into understanding this strange thing called Abundance, I found that such a world is built on love & cooperation, whereas the Scarcity paradigm rests on a world built around fear & competition.
If you take a bit of time to look at tribal life, you'll find that tribes are an extension of family, and nations an extension of tribes. Inside families, people sometimes work cooperatively towards mutual ends and shared desires. It does not take much of a leap to see that such a way of being can be extended beyond family, to a small tribe. And if that is the case, then it becomes merely a matter of how you define your tribe.
This understanding develops one person at a time, in it's own time, and as it does, society evolves.
So it is this vision I try to hold when I say 'I can see how things can be', even though I also see 'how things may be'. Frankly, life would be much easier if I didn't have to cope with the darker side of 'what may be'.
Good luck, and happy football watching. |
