Published and posted by Ilchi Lee writer of Healing Society

An old lady is killed for her Social Security check—beaten, raped, and smothered to death. A fourteen-year-old kid slits the throat of another fourteen-year-old for a vial of crack. A mother drowns her two little boys by locking them inside a car and driving the car into a lake. And you want to scream, “Why?”

Because we are still trying to figure out how to divide up the same bowl of rice? We still haven’t widened our sight enough to see the bowl itself. We are still stuck in this paradigm of competition that we’ve been living in since recorded history. We are searching for our self-worth through competition. When we win, we feel good about ourselves. When we lose, we feel bad. So, we want to win. At all costs. And the other people be damned. Because we want to win in this competition called life, we argue about the bowl of rice and go hungry as a result. That is how the world around us divides us up: in order to be anybody in this world, to feel good about yourself, to merely survive, you have to compete, and how can you tell who the winner is? The winner is the one with the most toys. The best houses, more cars, more women, more fame, more recognition, and more of everything.