Abundance

Abundance!

When you encounter that word, what comes to your mind? I’m talking about the first emotion that pops up through your cloud of thoughts. Is it joy? Is it sadness? Is it resentment? Or it might even be peaceful acceptance. Or maybe something more complex? It changes with you; the reader. Let me take you through a story, to show my understanding of abundance.

As a kid, I always assumed abundance was simply what I had. I was content with what was around me. I was content with my toys, my family, my friends, my skills and etc. I didn’t feel any ‘lack’. It might be better to phrase it as ‘I didn’t have a sense of what lack was’. So I was happy. Truly happy. Despite the challenges and obstacles that any average kid would go through.

But then, I grew up. Both in terms of age and mentality. I looked outside my ‘bubble’ of contentment. I saw things that other kids around my age had, that I didn’t. I saw their privileges, their luxuries, their skills and all other nonsense that slowly sprouted this thing called ‘lack’ in my mind. I slowly but surely started feeling a sense of lack of skills, toys, family and friends. I started wondering why I had less. And that was the beginning of me falling down a ‘rabbit hole’ of negative thoughts. One that I would not get out of until much later.

So, as I reached my teenage years, around 16-17, one of the things I thought about the most is the term coined ‘lack’. I saw it. I felt it. I imagined it. It felt like I was giving substance to an entity, born out of a simple notion.  It had power over me, over my happiness and most of all, my feeling of contentment. And you know what that made me into? A person who was never satisfied. My childhood feeling of contentment was contaminated with ‘lack’. And that ruined my chances at feeling true happiness, because even when I was happy, I was lacking.

This cycle continued for a long time. To a point where I had to drop everything else, my studies and all, to take a moment and think about what went wrong with my life regarding the aspect of ‘lack’. I went through all of the memories that surfaced at that moment and catalogued where I felt this mind poisoning thing called ‘lack’. And I realized, with dawning clarity, that every time I felt the lack of something was when I looked out of my ‘bubble’ and compared myself and what I had with others who were more entitled than me and what they had. It was a moment of self realization when I confronted one negative trait of me and questioned its existence. It was painful, having an understanding of what I did to feel that way, but it was also a subtle reckoning.

I realized, with painful clarity that my notion of ‘lack’ was directly or indirectly associated with comparing myself outside my ‘bubble’. I understood then that a root cause of all my negative emotions on ‘lack’ was because I was observing too much, contemplating too much on others!

You see, as kids we are content with what we have inside our ‘bubble’. But as we grow up, we get influenced by so many things that we lose our sense of contentment.  We compare ourselves to everyone else and each time, we are frustrated and feel a sense of loss. And that ruins the happiness, love, joy and the pride you deserve! It just ruins our peace and healthy acceptance.

So I learned. What? I learned that comparing ourselves with others with what they own will never do good. I learned that, when you look inside the ‘bubble’, the same ‘bubble’ you’ve been making since you were a kid, the one where it’s just you and what you have, you’ll find happiness. You’ll find contentment. Why? Because when it’s just you and only you, you’ll see how much you’ve gained through hardship, struggle and effort. And when you’re grateful for all of those, you’ll find happiness. Because you see ‘abundance’. When the only person left to compare is the version of you in the past, you’ll never lack. Because you’ve gained, with or without realizing, more than you’ve lost. It will always feel like a gain and in turn you feel a sense of abundance.

I say all of this, but I’m still struggling, even failing sometimes. There are days when I fall back into the same cycle. Days I feel the frustration and lack like poison. But you know what? Very slowly, I’m becoming better at looking only inside of my ‘bubble’. Because I can tell, for sure, that I’m better than who I was before. I compare less. Sometimes I don’t even mind what other people have or what they can do. Because they’re them. I’m me. And I’m proud of the changes in the way I feel and the way I care less.

Inside my bubble, it’s just me. And my happiness. And what I want to say is: “don’t lose sight of your ‘bubble’. Cherish it and protect it. Because that’s where happiness and ‘abundance’ truly exist.”