a thief named scarcity mindset

an essay on hunger and perception

I had this strange habit when I was a child/teen visiting other people’s houses. I’d walk in, chat a little, then open their fridge and look at the food. My brother would scold me and tell me to have better manners. I didn’t care for manners. I was always interested in refrigerators that were full of food packaged in colorful labels.

Or, rather, I was always hungry.

Photo by nrd on Unsplash

My parents did the best they could, but my mom would frequently tell me that she didn’t know if we’d have food next week. Our fridge would be somewhat filled, but never empty. When I was younger, we went to Costco. After a while our weekly Costco trips stopped, that’s when my mom told us we couldn’t afford the cost of membership.

Hope abounded. My mom frequented the immigrant grocery stores where the fruits and vegetables were grade C at best, and had to be cooked immediately. My Uncle N — bless him — would stop by with large ziplock bags full of adobo to freeze. Grandma would make us maruchan ramen or vienna sausages. An aunty would let us spend the night and feed us dinner. There was always a family party leaving us with plenty of baon for the week. We had food and we ate well.

As I look back at my childhood I often wonder if I was hungry. Maybe, I wasn’t? Maybe I was… trained… by society… to… normalize scarcity? So that I could strive to grind for a life of perceived abundance? But — in this world — who is the one deciding what abundance looks like?

I get leery when writing on this topic. Because I find that people who write about their traumas do it from a very individualistic angle. And, sometimes, they’ll write about outside factors and politics that play into what hurt them. It’s a truly rare occasion that someone writes about trauma from a collectivist mindset. So I want to write about my experience while also recognizing that my experience has been normalized in this ecosystem made to deeply traumatize children so they can become adults dependent on the dehumanizing hustle and grind culture of capitalism.

Photo by Lyyfe Williams on Unsplash