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The Allure of Scarcity

Audio Version (music by Oleksii Kaplunskyi)

Isn’t it interesting how we can sometimes let the game play us?

We are conditioned by our surroundings, and Western culture has a somewhat negative bias. Struggle and violence are more heroic than ease, grace, and lightness. The fear of sickness, pain, and death is more acceptable than the joy of living, breathing, and experiencing the complete profundity of every waking moment.

Misinformation, disinformation, advertising, capitalism, and inane, polluted mainstream media idiocy keep us going in circles, both mentally and literally. Our spirits have little room to dance in their freedom.

In our careers, we strive and succeed, but it is never enough. We continue to pursue money, merits, more useless stuff, or pieces of paper to frame — anything to give meaning to the pain, struggle, and quiet desperation we overcame, or to avoid brutal, honest reality checks and soul-shaking existential crises.

In relationships, we accept conditionality: we chase love, tolerate mediocrity, and try to fix one another. Or we adapt ourselves to superficially suit the needs of the coupling, or worse, we are constantly on the lookout for “red flags” and other likely trivial concerns that unintentionally sabotage what could be a very, very good thing. Perhaps we unconsciously believe we are unworthy of happiness, fulfillment, and stability. We’re afraid of what might happen if we ask for what we need. We run toward and we run away from it.

As artists, we have distorted ideas influenced by capitalist concerns. We’re disappointed when we only have a few fans or supporters, wishing for a few hundred thousand, when in reality, a few moved, inspired hearts and minds can influence hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

On the one hand, perhaps we conduct these spiritual checks and balances to assess our commitment to our purpose and to re-calibrate our inner compass. Or, perhaps, this ugliness arises to remind us that there may be a few old programs still protesting from underneath, and it’s time to sit for a while with whatever it is, to give it one last sing-through before we turn the page.

Scarcity thrives on lack: needing, wanting, seeking, and missing — issues and worries that are both unnatural and almost never of our own devising. Abundance is knowing and remembering what is always present, despite our imposed expectations and conditions.

In other words, there is no lack of abundance. Even so, there is belief in the abundance of lack. It all depends on how we choose to see things, and we can change the parameters of our reality in the blink of an eye.

Love your life.

“Shut It Down, Turn It Off”