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The Bridge Back to Abundance

From scarcity and fear to trust and wholeness.

10 min readMay 1, 2025
Not every apple becomes a tree. Some feed birds, some feed soil. All serve life. Abundance isn’t purpose — it’s participation.

Separation — How Scarcity Was Invented

There’s a story. You may have heard it. It starts in a small village.

The people of this village lived simply. They traded eggs for grain, firewood for cheese, childcare for bread. On any given morning, you might see someone chasing a chicken through the square, because chickens were a form of wealth — and sometimes also the currency. There were no banks, no ledgers. Just relationships. Reciprocity. Trust.

Then one day, a man arrived from far away.

He wore shiny shoes, a sharp hat, and a grin that curled like a question mark. He walked with the air of someone who knew something others didn’t. The villagers were curious. He looked nothing like them — too clean, too polished, like he had never carried firewood or knelt to tend the earth.

He stood in the village square and watched as a woman chased a chicken through the dust, laughing as she stumbled.

“Is this how you trade?” he called out, smirking.

The woman finally caught the bird, clutching it under her arm, cheeks flushed with sweat and triumph. She turned toward him, annoyed. “Do you have a better way?” she snapped.

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Ernesto van Peborgh
Ernesto van Peborgh

Written by Ernesto van Peborgh

Entrepreneur, writer, filmmaker, Harvard MBA. Builder of systemic interactive networks for knowledge management.

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