The Cross We Have To Carry.

Every now and then, I am hit by waves of despair which are so overwhelming in their impact as to be rivalled only by the emotional tsunami that engulfed the life of the young Buddha as he came to grips with sickness, old age, pain and death. I do not in any way attribute these paroxysms to the be-your-brother's-keeper configuration of my social milieu in which what affects the eyes also affects the nose and vice versa, but to a congenital biochemical constitution hardwired to my DeoxyriboNucleicAcid.

Every time I take a look at the socioeconomic landscape, I see it dotted with men and women who have sunk into the mud of precarious existence while trudging through the valley of the shadow of death without any prospect of ever reaching the promised land. Homelessness, joblessness, starvation and destitution metastasizing into abject poverty, are the skulls and cross bones that must perforce be dragged along on the journey to Golgotha.

My sense of righteous indignation is aroused when I see humanity on the brink of apocalyptic suffering without any justification. The Great Provider has in His infinite mercies endowed mankind with virtually limitless resources to sustain and maintain each one of us according to our needs. But because of the myth that more is better and that he who dies with the most toys wins, a great abyss now lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. There is no gainsaying the fact that nature is indeed a zero-sum game. Every acre of land you occupy elbows out somebody else. Every cow you slaughter for your family is one less for somebody else's.

The erroneous and condescending statement that many are called but few are chosen cannot be used to palliate the excesses, ostentation and conspicuous consumption of the so-called chosen few--our celebrities and the super rich-- who erect edifices in glorification of Mammon and indulge in wanton primitive capital accumulation. Given that almost everybody shares the same basic innate talents, objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the predictable must invariably be taken into account.

It is however not every wealth that is the result of organized, protected robbery, just as it does not also translate into the fruit of labour every time. Prosperity or wealth is supposed to be a teacher bestowing upon its recipients the noble virtues of humility, compassionate conservatism, prudence and altruism. As it were, the most difficult character in life's drama is that of the sagacious, and he must not be wealthy to play that role because prosperity has already pampered his mind. Privation, on the other hand is a greater teacher, training and strengthening the minds of the underprivileged who cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. To obtain the aforementioned which in a way constitute the basic necessities of life, a lot of people are forced to take on two or three jobs, and paradoxically, they have nothing to show for their hard work except an avalanche of unpaid bills.

Some of us are overachievers, while some are underachievers. If the overachievers among us adduce their success to ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration, it is only logical to deduce that the dismal performance of the underachievers could be attributed to ninety-nine percent inspiration and one percent perspiration. Inspiration on its own is a positive. It is the locomotive of ambition. Inspiration is ambition in motion. Ambition is energy and determination. But it calls for goals too. People with goals but no energy are the ones who wind up sitting on the couch saying "one day I'm going to build a better mousetrap." People with energy but no clear goals just dissipate themselves in one desultory project after the next. Add to these factors the element of risk and it becomes clear to see why and how there are overachievers and underachievers, for risk is the precondition of rewards.

Understanding this great divide and becoming aware of alternatives could be instrumental in getting around the problem posed by the characterisation of nature as a zero-sum game. The ultimate alternative lies in the Law of Unity which is the basic law of life. It is our ignorant or wilful infraction of this law that is responsible for our groping in the inextricable darkness of the problems it has raised. The Law of Unity is best exemplified by the one reality in which every pair of opposites is ultimately an illusion. And so, we find inspiration and perspiration dissolving into a synergy or symbiosis. Everyone becomes truly inspired to perspire more for the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pains for every other. Every life becomes equipped with inescapable turning points, opportunities, epiphanies and breakthroughs. And as the hitherto poor underachiever finds its material weapon in the heretofore rich overachiever, so the latter finds its spiritual weapon in the former.