The Answer Is GIVING!

As we hear more and more bad economic news and people get more frightened, more afraid – what happens? What happens to people when they are scared? People feel like their survival is threatened, that they may loose the things they have – the money, the car, the house – things that they believe are essential to life.

What has happened is that we have invested who are in what we own and those things have become us. Our ego, our identify actually convinces us that we ARE those things. How did we go from a sharing, connected society to one where our value is determined by what we have and what we buy? For decades, capitalistic beliefs have undermined and literally polluted our world. The myth of the self-made success keeps us all at the grindstone; the elusive image of wealth and freedom few achieve. Somehow the spectacular success, the money and fame, of the few keep us striving for that dream. Our culture reinforces these beliefs from birth with a constant barrage of messages from the media, from friends and from our family. The message is: who you are is what you have; your value is in your possessions. Consequently, we must buy more and more, but there is never enough because our ego always wants more. Then we work more to buy more. And as we now see, working more is not enough. Borrowing more became the only way to buy more for most people.

So as we get more frightened, we hold on ever tighter to the things we have. As we hold on, we worry more about loosing what we are holding on to and others do the same. A collective worrying permeates our society and soon, everyone is afraid of everyone else because they might want what WE have. This is an unnatural, inhuman way to live and that is where we are.

But there is another way, a way out of this maze of worry and fear.

GIVE !! Give away the things you are holding on to! Yes, give more than you have ever given in your life!

Wow, what would our world be like then? Instead of paranoia and fear of loss, we would see joy spreading as people received more than they ever have before. We would see joy in the faces of people as they give away their concerns replacing the anxiety we now see. And to top it all off, everyone would feel grateful and connected to the only real source of peace and happiness on this earth – other PEOPLE !

The homeless boy in this video lives with his mom at a shelter in Oxnard, CA. He is happy and his happiness has NOTHING to do with what he owns or doesn’t own. He has love and he gives love. That is all anyone needs.