Unlearning Scarcity
Reckoning with the never ending, no winning, relentless cycle of scarcity.
Hi, my name is Kerri and I’m a recovering perfectionist. This addiction keeps me striving towards unachievable and impossible goals. I hide inside my fear of failure. Busy-ness and workaholism serve as my socially acceptable cover. The belief that I am not good enough is a pull I have to negotiate and navigate every day. It is a choice, but it is also an indoctrination in a capitalist system that tells me I’m unworthy if I'm not perfect, productive and always improving. Perfectionism is a lie; I know this. But when I forget - when I’m not paying attention - I will do just about anything to achieve the impossible. And thus, goes the never ending, no winning, relentless cycle of scarcity.
Scarcity is such an enormous and all-consuming ideology, that no matter how far I traveled on my journey, it always followed. From my suburban upbringing to corporate America to wellness advocacy, the hustle was there reminding me of my inadequacy and pushing me to do more. Being overworked, exhausted and busy was a badge of pride. And feeling chronically unsatisfied was my state of mind. It was, and still is, the all-pervasive backdrop of a culture that thrives off our striving and keeps us distracted along the way. I was so busy proving myself, doubting myself, busying myself to death that I failed to see that there was no winning at this game; that it wasn’t me that was toxic but the system of scarcity that could never get enough - a system that continued to take more and more while giving less and less. And I knew that I, we, deserved better.
Scarcity is just one more social construct (it’s not real) that shapes our unconscious perceptions and drives our behaviors. Eventually, we project our ideas of scarcity internally and begin to perceive ourselves as measurable and commodified. These views are deeply scripted within us; narrated by a system that benefits from our not-enoughness and relentless striving. When we don’t feel valued, we don’t feel satisfied. It keeps us trapped by producing an insatiable sense of needing more - more money, more material goods, more validation, more status, more everything. “Even when the game is going our way, we often feel a nagging disconnect,” says Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money. “the gap between the way we imagine life should be and the way we are living it, under a daily pressure to earn more, buy more, save more, get more, have more and be more”. It situates us in this perpetual in-between state - we’re “here” but we want to be “there”. “Here” is lacking, it is not good enough, it is imperfect and unsatisfactory. “There” is not just aspirational, it is often idealistic and impossible.
I was raised by a bad ass single mother who wanted me to have everything but refused to give it to herself. At 24, she was raising a 2-year-old, working nights and going to school during the day. I watched her boldly hustle for the dream and sacrifice everything to give me the life she didn’t have. My memories of her growing up are a blur of her running from one place to the next, doing everything for everyone else, never complaining and never satisfied. But in doing it all, she neglected the most important person of all: herself. While I inherited her work ethic and service to others, I also learned to neglect myself - to give and strive for some mythical future state when I would finally be worthy of receiving. It was “I'll buy the dress when I lose 10 lbs.” or “I’ll go on vacation when I get that promotion”, or “I'll believe in myself when I've reached 10k followers on Instagram”. So much time wasted on not feeling good enough, so much energy spent on reaching for the impossible and so much that I love lost in not acknowledging what was there all along.
When “not enough” becomes the default setting in our lives, it not only informs our lives, but informs how we perceive and serve others’ needs and wellbeing. The lack we feel within ourselves gets projected out onto everyone and everything else. Consider: how do you feel when peers get promoted? Do you compare your lifestyle to other people? Are you constantly dissatisfied by what you have and what you don’t? Are you waiting for the “right job” or the “right conditions” to do what is important to you? The delusion of scarcity is one in which someone is either higher or lower, more or less, perfect or inadequate, enough or not enough. It pits us against one another - forcing us to compete and protect our piece of the pie. But no one loses anything when someone lives into their wholeness. It’s not a zero-sum game. We are simply human beings being human in a compromised world.
Perfectionism is a lie intended not just to keep us struggling in shame and scarcity, but to keep us complicit in upholding systems of exploitation and extraction. Everything that we allow when we don’t feel that we are enough not only harms us personally, but contributes to the cycle of oppression that is threatening our collective survival. Shame is political. Not only does it fuel the all-American obsession with being perfect, skinny, productive and well, but it is the driving force behind a system that thrives on controlling bodies to keep people performing their roles in the dynamic systems of oppression. Healing is taking an honest look at the role we play in our own suffering and the suffering of others. Whether we like it or not, there is no escape from these systems, there is no perfect way of being, no pure lifestyle that allows us to transcend the toxicity of our culture. The world is a fucked-up mess, and no amount of purity and perfectionism is going to fix it.