On scarcity and abundance
And choosing to embrace a lifestyle of abundance
I’ve been thinking a lot lately on scarcity and abundance. I’m not sure the ideas here fully hold together, but I wanted to share them anyway.
The scarcity story
So much of contemporary culture depends on a presumption of scarcity.
Capitalism itself, with its ideas about the “rational man”, assumes scarcity as the defining characteristic of life, that we are making choices to maximize our opportunities relating to scarce resources.
I can feel myself buying into that mentality more than I want to, talking about how awful the housing market and/or the job market is. Of how tight money is in our household. Of how few resources and options it feels like we have. That we should be thankful to have the housing and jobs we have because even these are in short supply.
And don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for these things. I try to practice gratitude every day.
But I remember the story I was telling myself after my thru-hike: it was different. I’d given up many of my worldly possessions and had carried the items I needed for six months in a pack on my back. I made friends on trail but I hiked it largely alone. I spent very little time on the internet, I wasn’t making money but was spending it, and my days were measured in miles hiked and how well I was managing my body’s weaknesses.
But I felt an overwhelming sense of abundance: a deep, unshakeable confidence that things would work out, that the right options or people or opportunities would present themselves in my life and I’d just have to recognize and embrace them.
The stories we tell to ourselves—and to each other—matter. And scarcity is a story we’ve been telling each other and ourselves for a long time. It is often the story told by governments to rationalize not granting citizenship or rights or access to various groups, as if there’s not enough to go around and we need to hoard what we have.
As Gareth Higgins writes in How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying:
The only way to be released from the myth of scarcity is to defect to the economy of interdependent gift. This doesn’t necessarily mean liquidating stocks and throwing a party instead or living off the grid (though it might); it means consciously choosing to replace the myth of scarcity with a life story of abundance. (134)
A life story of abundance
I like that phrase, “a life story of abundance.” It’s a story I’m trying to find a way to tell often and repeatedly in my own life.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I have far less abundance now than I did seven years ago. Then, I had a body that would quite literally push and power through anything I asked it to do, no matter how awful. It was used to being pushed to the absolute limits and somehow still carrying on.
These days, I have no such abundance. Energy and mental focus IS a very finite, somewhat scarce resource in my life.
But I have other things in abundance:
I have a deep, almost primal understanding of my body and its stressors now. An abundance of personal knowledge.
I have an expanded and broadened amount of empathy for others, to assume that there may be layers of struggle going on that I can’t see.
I have a far richer appreciation for the simple things: being able to smell and taste, spending time with my dog, curling up on a comfortable couch to read, snuggling with my partner and enjoying those long-running inside jokes you have in a relationship.
I have an abundance of love from friends and family near and far. I may not talk to them as much due to lack of energy, but I can feel that wealth and abundance if I take some time to notice it.
More than ever, I have perspective on just how silly the dominant cultural narrative is.
One of my goals this year is to embrace that life story of abundance and to let it reframe the choices I make.
For example:
My financial circumstances have left me wondering if I finally needed to suck it up and try to pursue a true full-time work situation again. I haven’t worked full-time hours since I quit my job in 2018 to thru-hike. I’ve been patching together freelance and contract work, which used to be pretty stable and well-paying but has gotten a lot more volatile and uncertain in the last 6+ months.
I’ve applied for a few jobs, all of which seemed like a good fit, none of which went anywhere. And as I’ve watched my body these last few months, I realized that, were I to take on full-time hours, there is absolutely no way I’d have anything left over for my own life. (Truth be told, I don’t think I *could* sustain a five-day, 40+-hour work week anymore, physically.)
But those choices are a requirement if, for example, I move forward with buying a house and having to pay a mortgage. They wouldn’t be a requirement if I opt for an alternate path. Teardrop campers are remarkably cost-effective, for example. :)
On the one hand, I know that “opting out” of the dominant cultural narrative is hard. I ran into this repeatedly when telling people I was going to hike the Appalachian Trail. I have, to a lesser degree, run into it when I tell people I volunteer for hospice.
But as Higgins pointed out:
The dominant culture may ask, Who are we to think we can live differently than others? Who are we to think we can override the rules of endless industrial growth, to sit still and enjoy love more than cash? We may respond by asking, Who does the culture think it is to stop us? What does it think we are, machines? Who are we to suppress a revolution of kindness and sanity that will create a world in which time is our friend? (131)
When I’m asked about what I learned from thru-hiking, this is the thing I struggle most trying to articulate: you are a human being, not a machine. You can choose a path that is revolutionary for yourself. And most likely, that path begins with abundance.
Once we step outside the familiar constructs of capitalism and scarcity, there are much larger patterns we can tap into.
Cooperation rather than competition
Our dominant culture, and particularly the capitalist portions of it, frames everything as a competition. We compete for resources, for jobs, for opportunities. We’ve often viewed nature through this competitive lens, in a survival of the fittest way (a metaphor which itself has bled into social Darwinism, implying that those who aren’t successful are somehow inferior).
But nature itself is remarkably cooperative, if you dig deep enough.
Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses this at length in The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. If you’ve not yet read it, it’s full of good little gems, but I’m particularly thinking of this passage:
There is no question that all living beings experience some level of scarcity at various points, and therefore that competition for limited resources, like light or water or soil nitrogen, will occur. But since competition reduces the carrying capacity for all concerned, natural selection favors those who can avoid competition. Oftentimes this avoidance is achieved by shifting one’s needs away from whatever is in short supply, as though evolution were suggesting “If there’s not enough of what you want, then want something else.” This specialization to avoid scarcity has led to a dazzling array of biodiversity, each species avoiding competition by being different. Diversity in ways of being is an antidote. (76-77, emphasis added)
We’ve been taught that we must compete to succeed. But what if, instead, we view the scarcity we experience as a sign that we should “want something else”? Perhaps being unable to successfully buy a house for four years is just evolution’s way of telling me that I should want something else and put my energies there. And since I’m a lot more comfortable stepping outside these narrative boundaries, I’m probably better positioned to do this than many people.
Putting it into practice
After reflecting on these ideas the last few weeks, I’ve made a few big changes:
I requested—and was approved—for one more day per week from my main freelance gig. This takes me up to three days a week with them and, consequently, stabilizes my finances.
I withdrew from my savings and cashed in my one non-retirement investment to pay off my car loan early. That loan payment has been causing me a great deal of stress. That stress was driving my own scarcity mentality. With it gone, I’m officially debt-free again. I feel light and full of possibility.
I’m tapping back into my thru-hiking Sassafras roots. I’m still not buying much, but instead of tellingg myself it’s because I can’t afford it, I’m telling myself it’s because I want to carry less or make more myself. These are counter-narratives focused on what I have (freedom, skills) rather than what I lack (oodles of money).
I’m contemplating very different living arrangements like yurts or teardrop campers, weighing the pros and cons of them for me, my dog, my partner, and my lifestyle. After 4+ years of abysmal home-buying options and a deep dread of being locked into a mortgage payment, I’m exploring the idea that the future doesn’t have to look like that. It’s realigning me with the path I was on post-thru-hike and pre-Long Covid, when I was seriously researching converting a school bus into a tiny home and other less common living options.
I’m not sure yet where this abundance mentality will lead me, but I know it feels a lot better than where scarcity was getting me.
The stories we tell ourselves are important, now more than ever. And right now, I choose a story of abundance and belief that the future can be better. It won’t be easy, particularly for those of us here in the United States, but I’ll never stop resisting the story I’m being fed by the media, our government, and society at large. We all deserve something different.