A land of promise or a land of promises?

“To believe a thing impossible is to make it so.”
- French Proverb

Is there such a place? One place in the world: where anything can be got; and everything can be realised through mere promises: A land of promise converted to the land of promises? Of course, there is; and that is the land called Lanka: a land of unusual fertility and abundance, a land akin to utopia; where anything can be got and everything can be realised: that is, if one listens to the politicians of Lanka.

What a wonderful place must this land be; that such impossibilities are possible. That it is not a dreamland but a land of dreams, a land of milk and honey; but only for those few possessed of riches and power; is true.

The rest, the rich of heart but poor of means, live in a state of dream, dreaming of the promised land: imagining the images of a perfect land so fertile, its green hills flows with honey dripping from its hives like liquid gold in the sunlight.

A land, covered with flowers of its myriad wild fruits, and the warm valley air smelling of their nectar; gushing, somehow, from the land itself, there are springs of pure milk, white as snow, and bright streams of it flowing through the hills, as if from the milk of an eternally vibrant earth mother, in her fruitful cycle of multiplication.

It is, according to the rich and powerful, “the progressive of all lands”, a paradise whose people would lack nothing.

All that, of course, is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you, for they speak with lips that distil nectar: honey and milk are always under their tongue; but never the truth.

Do not be deceived when they tell you that things are better now; that there is no inequality and injustice, discrimination and favouritism in the land worth speaking of; and that there is no poverty to be seen.

That is because; inequality and poverty being well and truly hidden, with figments of facts, figures, and statistics; and swept under the carpet; is invisible to the sightless.

What is more a truth is that, the powerful and the wealthy do not see what they do not wish to see.

Tradition preserves the fruit of the bee's labour as a divine blessing, and maintains its enduring sacred nature. Likewise, this curious, supernatural, fictional image of “the progressive of all lands flowing with milk and honey” - a land of promise - is repeatedly evoked, every now and then, by celebrations of the rich and powerful as a red herring of appeasement and concession to the poor.

From the time of Ravana they have alluded to the “land flowing with milk and honey” - that divine destination of a people fleeing poverty: the Promised Land. That, that land of promise never comes and remains a land of promises, but only to the rich and powerful, is an altogether different story.

For them, the rich and powerful, the land is forever the Promised Land; except that they do not comprehend that, the truth about “forever” is that, “forever” could end in an hour, or a 100 years from now - one can never know for sure.

What, then, is there left to do for those who 'forever' await the land of milk and honey, but to count every second and live by the moment: And what they have to decide is how they want their life to be, while awaiting “forever”, forever in the land of promises.

A man is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has; for it is the heart that makes, a man rich; and being rich of heart, makes you wealthy beyond compare is another lie told by the rich to appease the poor.

The poor are not thieves like the many newly rich; and at least do not indulge in the sort of thieving that many companies, businesses, and politicians indulge in, for they rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one.

The law does not lay hold of them; and the prison and the reformatory does not follow the lead of the law as it would, if the poor indulged in an act of thievery to appease his hunger.

Thus, the poor live spending the best part of their life trying to earn money to enjoy a questionable liberty that may come, if at all it does, during the least valuable part of their life - awaiting death.

It reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, that he might return to England and live the life of a poet: a life that requires not a fortune, but imagination and learning.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but are positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

What everybody passes by as being truly rich today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilising rain on their fields.

The size of our success is measured by the strength of our desire, the size of our dream. Nevertheless, for the poor and the men of lesser means, the only place where all dreams of riches become impossible is in their own thinking; because, in their thinking they remain poor.

Nothing is possible, if we think them impossible, because impossible only means that you have not found the solution yet.

Man has more power than will; and it is often by way of excuse to self that he fancies things are impossible. So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

Hence, know and believe that anything is possible; but not that, anything can be got, or everything can be realised, as made to believe by those who frequently say it.In the nations of the poor, where everything is a promise made year on year, repeatedly; the day of those who labour to live, ends with the going down of the sun.

They are then free to devote themselves to their chosen pursuit, independent of their labour; but those who promise a land of promise, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other, because they have chosen the pursuit of power, riches, and promises.

The poor, thus, live according to their dictates, a life of simplicity, dependence, magnanimity, and trust; but unfortunately, never a life so, as to possess wisdom. Thus, they remain poor with no subtle thoughts that require the mind to think.

The unthinking poor only look forward to the words of promises made by worthless people: the plan of saying much the same thing regularly every day, but never intending to fulfill the uttered words.

These monotonous words are looked forward to as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before; even though it turns out to be not the novelty anticipated, the redemption expected.

Of course, the poor would grumble a little, and yet look forward to something newer next time: akin to the budget speeches of many nations that come and go annually, but provide no succour; and proving the point that the poor are an easy people to govern.

Thus the moral is, keep the people poor, so that the rich and powerful remain rich and powerful and convert the land into a place where anything can be got; everything realised - for the rich and powerful.

For views, reviews, encomiums, and brickbats:

[email protected]