If abundance is so prevalent....

If abundance is so prevalent, why do so many people suffer? I have been asked this question over and over again this month. Sadly, abundance has very little to do with human suffering.

Take for example all those "starving children in China"? I grew up hearing about. It turns out that the grain coffers were full during the Chinese "famine." There was plenty of food present, it just wasn?t available to the 10 million people who died. The same is true for the Irish potato famine. Ireland grew an abundance of food. It just wasn't grown for the farmers who worked the fields.

In China, Mao Zedong exported grain as a political maneuver in the Great Leap Forward. The peasants starved in the countryside even though there was more than enough food. In Ireland, the United Kingdom took the food grown in Ireland and used it to feed a starving empire. In almost every modern famine situations, politics and genocide are the primary reasons people go without food. (Click here for more on famine.)

We live in an abundant world; we are simply not abundant creatures. Human beings struggle to feel compassion for anyone they perceive as different from them. Every minute of every day, people decided they are different from other human beings and begin to hoarding resources. It doesn?t matter if you define yourself by color, religion, education, economic class or any other definition. The simple act of defining yourself sets you up as separate from someone else. Then you begin to hoard resources.

Everyone naturally wants to provide for their own. Yet, every single act of hoard resources necessary blocks the natural abundant flow of receiving, enjoying and letting go.

If we want to truly live in an abundant world, we must begin to look at every living being with compassion. We must work to eliminate resource hoarding ? whether it is in another country such as Darfur or in our own).

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