Learning To Live In Both Austerity And Abundance

Being poor is so expensive not even money can free us from its mindset

a woman walks over water with fish flying over her, digital art — by DALL·E

I belong to that generation of children who were told to finish all their food because poor kids in the third world were starving. It was some years before the flaw in logic was apparent, but many such flaws have become progressively visible as we have interacted with reality. I was always fortunate enough to have my bare necessities more than covered, but letting something go to waste was never acceptable.

Naturally, food is the most evident example: my mum will still finish what we leave on the plate or save it for later. Whenever I visit my old home, I find the same cutlery, dishes and pots that we used when I was a little boy. She will keep the same appliances until they break, uninterested in new features or higher efficiency. The furniture disposition has also remained intact for decades. These circumstances make me uneasy, generating a sort of contradiction: I feel it would be nice to need so little, but I gasp for air at the prospect of a similar life. In a way, I have always despised stability yet craved it.

Being one step ahead of poverty has this effect: we know we could aim for more than we have but are also aware we could slip down the ladder at the next obstacle. We may not be poor…