Survivors are people who live after a disaster. They are also those who are left behind after a patriarch departs the flesh. I have chosen the former for this discussion. Nigeria may be that disaster. The microcosm of Nigeria is of course the family, the clan and the country.
Nigerians lay undue emphasis on survivors in their daily lives, not as a feeling of being responsible for their offspring but in ego massage for public acclaim during their earth lives. Citizens go to great lengths to acquire earthly possessions: multiple mansions, hotels, homes, huge residential and commercial properties in high income zones of cities to preserve their name and provide handsome buffer for their offspring to continue to remain relevant.
The fundamental mistake, of course, is that property and possessions do not make a good life. They may assist one with a mission to fulfil his mission, if he converts such assets to liquid capital for worthwhile investment in productive enterprises. Even at that, it could distract one beyond a modest margin.
Property and possessions, in the same breath, help one without a mission to self-destruct speedily. Possessions beyond a modest level swings human spirit out of the purpose of life. My stand here is that it is utter folly to own more investments than can allow one address the real purpose of life on earth: to contribute to the betterment of creation and its inhabitants and inheritors into the far future. Love and welfare of all should be the guiding principle.
Most people who find too much allurement to own assets nudge themselves out of that tempting goal by investing substantial funds in charities. It leaves them free to address the unity of humanity, with love and social responsibility for all in the human family.
People, who issue from reasonably comfortable families are less prone to owning property and possessions than those from poor families. A background of deprivation and segregation burns poverty into young psyches and often drives them into extremes of craving for wealth and power. With accumulation of wealth, naturally comes the ambition to command and control or lead in order, first, to prolong that status with power, and thereafter, a further craving for veneration and acknowledgment of one’s importance. That explains the proclivity of people who come to so much wealth to spend so much energy pushing for recognition of their wealth and importance. At the drop of a hat, they invite people to muster around them and acknowledge their status.
It is more dangerous for people of humble means to hold power and wealth with appropriate humility than for people from comfortable families to seek to accumulate and flaunt wealth. Those from poorer families could be deadly under threat. The preoccupation of people from humble backgrounds usually is to announce their arrival at the club of the affluent. Those who are cut by the bug love to display the whole range of their assets at the slightest cooked up opportunity. All that is desired from the visitor is awe and further acclaim. A thin line separates megalomania from craving of this type. What is the benefit of owning a home in all state capitals for only 70 years of earthly life? Spending only 24 hours a month in each of his homes, he would need to move not less than 36 times in 36 days to go round his properties, let alone live in them. The best he could do would be to go round the rooms and rest in each for a few minutes and proceed to others in turn. Folly of the highest order.
The main purpose of life is experiencing. It is to use experience here in creation to lighten the spirit through interacting with other human beings, sharing love and responsibilities in such ways as should redound to harmony and happiness for all co-inheritors of creation without exception. This creation offers us an opportunity for shedding our dross of Karmic debts to qualify for higher planes in creation. Our earthy lives compel the opposite. We are, for the most part, stranded and bogged down by own choices here in dense creation to property and possessions which we are unable to take along after this earth sojourn. That is the dilemma of survivors. They are lost in ownership of property and possessions and cannot rise to lighten themselves.
The discerning should observe that there are no real barriers between the rich and poor. Where humans have erected such barriers, they have continued to crash and disfavour those who created them. The affluent who keep to their cocoons find little room to experience richer components of creation as they find increasing room for fear and protection from the majority. Obviously those who need guards are those who come short of their positive roles in creation, for they are in perennial fear of being a target for the majority. Why bother to make yourself a target for anyone?
Property worth having is one that enriches the broad spectrum of humanity. Farms and industrial property addressing farm produce and plants spewing out packaged food are worth having. They provide employment, fulfilment and satisfaction to people and consequently lubricate harmonious existence here.
Glory in earthly terms and inheritance attaching thereto will not amount to lightness of spirit that will be the ultimate benefit from worthwhile earthly existence. Survivors with too much of assets get lost in pursuit of chimera rather than substance of life.
