I love to travel. I don’t have the opportunity to go many places, but I get around to some degree. Me and my road partner drive everywhere. We have driven from the Poconos in Pennsylvania to Indianapolis, Indiana–ten hours drive. We’ve driven from Indianapolis to Grovetown, Georgia, just a few minutes outside of Augusta–eleven hours drive. We’ve driven from the Poconos to Florida–sixteen hours. And from Grovetown to Florida–about seven hours drive. We’ve also driven from the Poconos into Manhattan in New York as well as from Indianapolis to Elkhart, Indiana–three hours give or take. We plan to take a road trip out west to see what the other mid-western states are like. Our ultimate destination, California. We plan to stop off to see a number of places, including the Grand Canyon. During our drives, we’ve experienced many interesting things, but none more interesting than the vast landscape that always begins in less than an hour outside the city limits.
Driving has given us time to think deeply about our planet. One of the notions that is central in much of our conversations is overpopulation. Each time we drive through a state, we are amazed at the amount of land available, some of which sits unused and covered with grass. As I write this, we are passing through yet another large tract of land, seemingly well over one hundred acres as far as the eyes can see. Many things have come to mind from our conversations and observations.
Take a moment to grab an empty glass. Imagine the glass is earth. It is empty, void of anything. Now, begin to fill that glass with water. Imagine each drop of water represents a human being. As the water enters the glass, the level begins to rise. Remember, the glass is earth and the drops of water are people. Continue to fill the glass and watch the water rise to the rim. What happens if you continue to let the water run into the glass? The glass obviously becomes full and will then begin to flow over. That is because the glass is overpopulated and you are now seeing and experiencing the visual manifestation of the overpopulated glass. The water will run onto the floor and eventually wet all of your kitchen. Soon, if you continue to let the water run, your kitchen, now representing the planet, will become overpopulated with water. If there is no outlet, the water will rise, filling the kitchen. You will need to remove yourself from the kitchen because you and the water cannot reside in the same space without the obvious problems arising. The water will begin to displace all air space and you will be forced to leave your home. In essence, the water has overpopulated your home, leaving you with no where to live. If you remain in the house, you will eventually drown in the water that continues to rise.
Let’s look at another scenario. You are in a school that contains one hundred rooms. Each room holds twenty students comfortably, with room for at least another thirty students semi-comfortably, but still with space enough for everyone to move around. At times, the teachers will place forty students in one room, leaving a room empty. There have even been times when this has happened rather frequently, and as much as fifty rooms are left empty. One day, the teachers decide they want to pack the students into about ten rooms, all squeezed in with no room to walk around or even turn. If the teachers were to do this and the students were left to uncomfortably live in only ten rooms, would that mean the school as a whole, with ninety empty rooms, is overcrowded? Or simply the ten rooms the students are in?
In life as in science, anything that is overcrowded shows visual manifestation of such. If a glass is overcrowded with water, it begins to run over and wet the area outside of the glass. If a classroom is overcrowded, one can visually see how uncomfortable the living arrangements are for the students. If a school is overcrowded, the same manifestation will occur. If a bowl of marbles is continually filled with more marbles, all additional marbles will eventually roll out of the bowl. So what is the evident conclusion one would come to?
If a planet is overcrowded, as many claim is the case for Earth, then it would be physically impossible for us to drive the thousands of miles that we’ve driven and see thousands of acres of land stretching across hundreds of miles between cities without seeing a single human being. People would be spilling over onto the roads, there would be no room to move. You could not drive, walk or fly anywhere without seeing people shoulder to shoulder, bumping into each other, squeezing past each other and having no where to go that is empty and void of large groups of people.
Those in power bank on the populace not using any critical thinking skills to ascertain the truth of our existence. They tell us what they want us to believe and we should merely believe it without thinking. We no longer use our eyes to see what is right before us. We no longer use our ears to hear what is there for us to hear. We no longer use our minds to contemplate anything outside of what we are told to contemplate. We therefore never realize, unless triggered, that we are being tricked, bamboozled, hoodwinked into believing fantasy rather than recognizing reality.
Leave the city you live in. Drive to another state. Take a long road trip. Drive across the mid-west even. You will find that the only places on the planet that are crowded are cities–like being packed into a single room in a school containing one hundred rooms. The single classroom is your city. Look around you, there are many empty rooms for you to explore. All those rooms are empty. You’ve been tricked into believing that it is alright for a single person or monarchy to own ten thousand acres of land, or that it is alright for the government or oligarchy to own a hundred thousand acres of land or more. And now when this “ownership” is announced and at gun point you are forced to stay off certain areas of your plush, rich planet, ripe for planting, growing and living, you are then told, with a straight face and authority, that the planet is hereby overcrowded.
The laws that govern land distribution and ownership are not in alignment with natural laws. Yet some translate this imbalance into the planet being overpopulated. The lack of willingness of those in power (those with the biggest guns and most propensity for violence) to equitably allow for everyone to live on the planet as rightful owners of land, tax free, does not magically create an overpopulated planet. What is created is the illusion of overpopulation by virtue of denial. The fact of the matter is that people are being denied their basic human right to live freely. Those denying the populace the right to live on land freely were not and are not the keepers of the land, yet they have dubbed themselves owners of what does not belong to them and what they did not and could not create. They cannot see that land is not meant to be owned, but lived on. The bullies now run the playground yard.
Look around you. Travel outside the comforts of your city, which is at this very moment clouding your ability to see truth. Travel to other countries, leave their cities as well. Go see their countrysides. Visit the Serengeti, see and experience the vastness and how empty it is of humans. Visit the Amazon, the Sahara Desert, the Congo. Go see the Canyons of China. Visit the hillsides of Ireland or the flatlands of Australia. If like droplets of water filling a glass you do not see droplets of people filling the land and spilling over into the oceans, valleys, mountains and hillsides, then you have come to the realization that your planet is not overcrowded and someone has just played a grand joke on you. Now, the only question you have left to ask is, why?
No single thing or person is an inspiration to me. I am inspired by all that is, the good and the bad, the sexy and not so sexy. My inspiration comes from being present with the many experiences of life. If I am in the moment, then whatever I see, touch, hear or taste can become my inspiration. Today, I may be inspired by the seed of a mango. Tomorrow, I may be inspired not by the trees that sway, but by the wind that sways them. Another day I am inspired by the tiny ant that runs up a wall, or by the night blooming flowers I was fortunate enough to see only a few nights ago. Sometimes something a person says may inspire me, even though the person may not be someone I admire. It is all very cosmic and ever changing, flowing with the tide of life and merely being. I don’t need to seek inspiration, I allow inspiration to live and breathe in everything around me–within me. My only duty is to be aware and present at all times, so inspiration can come into focus on its own terms.
