Scarcity — The Capital City of Heaven
About 117 billion people have been born on Earth so far. Among these countless travelers of life, I wonder how many are first-time visitors and how many hold a multi-entry visa.
The faith that I happened to be born this time ( of my parents ) believes in reincarnation. Simply put, based on how I live this life ( karma ), my next life is decided. If all goes well, I don’t have to come back again and I can get absorbed in the Vaikuntha, the highest of 14 worlds, aka God’s adobe.
But I guess I screwed up a lot in the last 300,000 years as a human as I am still here on Earth. Assuming my soul and first body were designed and manufactured somewhere in ancient Ethiopia around 300,000 BC, that’s roughly 3750 times born as a human. In between these cycles, I hope I had occasional births as a house cat, at least once every 50 births or so. After all, everyone deserves a few lifetimes of just being selfish and eating shellfish. If my guess is anywhere close to the truth, sometimes what my mother tells me makes sense, “it’s all a leela” (play) of God. Well then…it’s time I introduce Gods to cricket next time I get a chance.
At times when I feel pensive or sad, such as when Virat Kohli gets out for an outside edge, I ask myself why am I born again and again? Is it because of an accounting error I made in Macedonia BC 325? Or maybe I once finally made it to heaven and gods realized the Oscar actor inside me while on earth. Or perhaps I wasn’t mummified with enough vegetarian food to survive the afterlife.
No matter the reason for this birth, I long believed I had attained salvation, having been born in a placed branded as the “God’s own country”. A land adorned with coconut trees, lush tea plantations, elephants, vibrant festivals, beaches, rivers, one of the world’s finest hospital systems and arguably the prettiest girls.
However, as I started to meet more and more people, things started to look different. It seemed that no one was content with their status quo. People sought change, growth, innovation, and re-engineering in their personal lives as well as in their careers. On top of that, many people are searching for a life beyond the earth and mortality. That’s when I got dejected and thought, well…this world does not seem quite like heaven. Perhaps heaven 360p? I wondered.
If I were a God — or even The God — humans would be the last of my creations I’d choose to keep close. I could work with cats, dogs or even garden snakes. But with humans, I could never be certain of their intentions. One fine day he could decide to conquer my kingdom, one fine day he could wake up with an idea to make bombs out of potatoes. And who knows — one morning, they might simply find their assigned plastic chair uncomfortable and decide to wage a war for the iron throne!
Wherever there are sentient beings, whether on Earth or beyond, thoughts are inevitable. On earth, it’s about education, jobs, relationships, money, a bit more money, maybe a little bit more. Even the Buddha must have pondered one day to stop shaving and grow his beard.
If there is a mind, it is bound to rattle. If people with mind and consciousness were actually in a real heaven, they would be reporting to the almighty and working towards achieving the top praiser of god award, contesting for the position of chief of natural disasters, or becoming the head advisor and procrastinator of the judgement day, to name a few.
Wherever there are people who can think, economics is bound to happen, and one major element of it is scarcity.
Scarcity is often perceived as the basic economic problem. What or how much of something is scarce differs from person to person. But it’s those nice limited things that make living exciting. Time’s valuable because it’s limited, gold can be invested because it is limited, and books and poetry are written about love because it’s rare or perhaps even non-existent in many people’s lives!
There can only be one Iron throne and having a thousand makes them mere iron chairs.
If everything and anything is readily available and abundant, where’s the zest for life?
For me, heaven is found in places or things or instances where beauty and rarity go hand in hand, reserved for those who truly seek them. You can get it if you are willing to drive through the winding roads, one hairpin after the other, the more mystifying the journey, the more heavenly each destination will be.
But where exactly is that?
There is no one place, thing, feeling or desire that all the people in this world would like or dislike. Not everyone likes chocolates, coffee or flowers. There can never be one universal heaven with anything and everything. What Michael Jackson might envision as paradise could be entirely different from Buddha’s. Your heaven is your heaven and it is what you create and it is unique to you.
That could be El Dorado, your home, your office, a beach, sleeping on a Helix Midnight Luxe, or spending some time with your best friend :)
Not so long ago, as I walked along a river bank, one shy little pebble caught my attention. The sunlight rocketing down the whispering leaves blushed the pebble’s polished skin. When I indicated my presence with a touch of my feet, it silently screamed, “lift me uup!” carving a half-crescent smile on my face. This rare moment transformed a few moments of my current earthly errand heavenly!
Thus and so, there awaits more such scarce things and rare moments, waiting to be met, to be lifted, to be travelled together and cherished. May we all experience such moments, rare as they may come, transforming anywhere on Earth the heaven of your dreams!
