Abundance is scarce.

I can't remember what Dr. Helen Walker said in writing seminar about scarcity versus abundance -- probably because I thought I already understood the idea at the time.

Now I know I didn't, and that I likely never will.

And that it's almost certainly for the best that I don't.

I understand where my mother was coming from, insisting that she couldn't choose to be happy when her options seemed limited to ones that would make her miserable. I understand where I was coming from when I felt that way, which happened a lot at every previous point in my life, and will probably happen to me again.

I don't believe in the Power of Positive Thinking. I believe in the power of really thinking, which often causes a person to contradict positive thinking and occasionally precludes happiness. It certainly doesn't encourage it.

But it does, I think, lead a person more clearly through inevitable obstacles than fakery or denial, which are what Positive Thinking amount to, in my mind.

In "Problems in Philosophy" class my freshman year, our professor asked us what we would do today if we knew that we were certain to die tomorrow. I said that I would tell the unadulterated, unasked-for truth, to everyone. I know better than to think I have any capital-T Truth now, but I still think the impulse was a good one. My best friendships were and are based on mutual self-revelation. There's a certain selfishness in assuming that what you have to say about yourself -- your desires and dreams and disappointments -- will be important to others, but there's another, more toxic selfishness, I think, in keeping yourself "private," walling yourself off from the world. Privacy is an illusion in the world-at-large as much as it's an illusion in a cubicled corporate office. We don't actually get to be self-contained, to choose not to impact each other, even if we have "good intentions" -- like not unleashing an evil, or selfish self on the world.

The problem with trying to spare the world your self-centeredness is that it keeps the world from changing that gravity: You remain terminally self-involved when you repress or deny or privatize your interests. You lack a sense of humor, because you have no sense of proportion. You lack perspective on your problems because, being encased in a walled city of self, you can't see or attend to anyone else's.

If you are all you have, if your resources are the only ones at your disposal, you have a right to observe their scarcity. Individuals are pretty pitifully outfitted for solo survival. Individuals who insist on relying on only themselves in the middle of a teeming city of other life, other resources, appear strange and sadly misled, at best. My mom limited herself to this, to the idea that her universe was and must be limited to what she could see or understand, now -- that no surprises are possible.

People who insist on relying on only themselves only succeed in denying that they are relating to others. They often end up being more careless and more self-centered than they would be if they dealt with themselves and others directly. Their boundaries are impossible and do not work.

But I've found -- as the original and seemingly insatiable teller of my life story to any listening audience -- that establishing no boundaries leads to equal internal scarcity. Relying on other people to bind you up, to nourish you, is necessary, but toxic in too-large quantities. It makes you need them.

But this is all stuff that it does absolutely no good to say, because it doesn't make sense until it makes sense. Before that, it sounds like everyone is talking gibberish. I might as well be copy-and-pasting the word "spaghetti" over and over again here.

I think the universe is a scarce place. I think it is a wasteland. I think it is mostly deserted, and that most of it is hard, thrifty and difficult.

I think that in that environment, we can appreciate sudden and intermittent abundance the way a Bedouin appreciates an oasis. I don't know if we can live in abundance all the time; I don't know if we have those sorts of choices. I think I know that hope, eventually, never disappoints and, eventually, is never misplaced, because hope is an end in itself. I guess that makes me a believer in abundance, however distant.

There was a sermon given by the wife of the pastor at Life Center once, in which she listed seven -- seven being the number of God -- ways to elude the devil. I remember that they all began with the word "go," but I only remember one of them: "Go down." She talked about how lifeguards heading out to save a drowning person might find themselves being dragged under by the panicked drowner; their only hope was to dive. The person hanging onto them would let go, being unwilling to go under. She explained that the devil would never humble himself, and that if we did, we would find ourselves safe.

I didn't like her point; it had several glaring logical flaws. But it stuck with me.

And I think it has probably saved me -- the content, not the fact that she said it or the way she presented it. I suspect that part of what has brought me to this point of feeling like a person, like an independent person faithful to myself and to others, without taking too much and without giving (in) to excess, is recognition of the strange beauty of scarcity. I suspect that part of the difference between me, now, and my mom, is that I have learned to spend time with what I have -- negatives included -- and to allow them, and occasionally love them.

It's not that I believe that bad things will never happen, in other words, that allows me to hope. Naivete was not given to me as an option. I am a (hopeful) person because I know, now, that I can withstand them. I know I can survive the rejection and betrayal and the parsimony and poverty of the universe, because I have done it.

My sense of abundance comes out of scarcity. I see only positive options when I hit bottom. I am strongest when the crises are. I'm not bragging -- this means I'm lackluster when left slack, when the universe is not demanding enough of me, and I don't often have the discipline to stay on task, which is worrisome -- but this is who I am, essentially. If I am creative, this is why. If I am ever positive, this is the reason. My faith is in this: not in others to not betray me, not in myself to not fail, not in the universe to make me happy, but in my spirit's viability, flexibility -- in the possibility and certainty of redemption.

Bit of a manifesto, but that's the truth. (Asked for, this time.)