Heaven or Hell

There’s a man who inherited some land on the island on which he built a hotel. One time I visited his place and he said to me: "I wish I could live like you”

It’s the first time someone say that line to me. When you’re poor, you think no one wants to copy your lifestyle so you can be uniquely poor, but I can tell he means it. “Be careful with your wish”, I said.

Why a businessman possesses so many things that most people dream of, want to live like a vagabond? After a few days of observing his design of civilized adult life and the landscape of inner desperation, I can see why and I want to be a child forever! For those things are more easily acquired than got rid of. The encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the properties. When we got things we desired, we may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it is the thing that got us.

One night, we sat on a cliff in front of his place, looked out the ocean. A full moon night, the wind was strong, waves crashing on the shore, the scene was magnificent like in some kind of heaven but he’s not there to see all the beauty of nature, he’s living hell in the world of his mind. We’re in the same spot on this planet simultaneously, but our experiences were so completely different. One of the greatest privileges of human beings is that we have individual experience on this vast existence. And we made it so miserable in every possible way. That night I realized heaven and hell are not geographical locations, just dimensions of experience.