I grew up learning how not to waste. Finishing what was on my plate was never framed as discipline or virtue—it was simply how care was expressed. It never occurred to me that this instinct might someday become a way of living rather than a way of surviving.
When Enough Was Felt
There was a time—or at least a way of living—when enough didn’t need proving.
Hunger was visible.
Care was close.
Belonging didn’t require language because it was assumed.
Scarcity existed, but it arrived like weather—something endured together, not a rule the world obeyed. Life moved at the speed of relationship.
The First Drift
The drift didn’t begin when things actually ran out. It began when the possibility of running out became the organizing fear.
Distance grew—between people, between cause and consequence, between effort and outcome. What could once be felt directly now had to be anticipated.
So we stored.
We planned.
We guarded.
We optimized.
Not because we were greedy, but because we were unsure.
Enough could no longer be trusted in the present; it had to be secured against the future. Scarcity stopped being an event and became an expectation.
What We Built to Hold the Fear
That expectation quietly changed how we built.
What couldn’t be trusted had to be measured.
What couldn’t be felt had to be tracked.
What couldn’t be shared freely had to be allocated carefully.
Over time, life learned to count—not just food or money, but time, labor, and worth itself. Scarcity didn’t disappear. It learned how to organize.
I can see this pattern clearly in my own life.
I was raised with the simple expectation to finish my plate, shaped by an inheritance of food insecurity and malnutrition that was rarely spoken but always present. So I finished it—not as a choice, but as a reflex.
Then I moved to the United States. Over the years, prices rose and portion sizes grew, as if size itself became the justification. More food for more money. More value on the plate.
And I kept finishing it.
Even as I exercised.
Even as I trained.
Even as my body no longer needed what my habits still obeyed.
I optimized around it.
Nothing dramatic happened. That’s what made it easy to miss. The system worked. The habit held. The cost accumulated quietly. I carried more calories than I needed, more weight than my frame asked for, and more risk than I wanted to name—especially with a predisposition to diabetes, cholesterol issues, and cardiac events.
Scarcity hadn’t disappeared when food became abundant.
It had simply migrated into my body.
The Scarcity of Presence
I notice the same pattern now in places that have nothing to do with food.
Presence itself has become scarce—not because people don’t care, but because so many are afraid of running out.
Running out of money.
Running out of time.
Running out of margin to afford a life that keeps getting more expensive just to stand inside.
So we stay occupied. We stay reachable. We stay productive. We are present enough to function, but rarely present enough to linger.
Phones fill the pauses.
Work follows us home.
Rest feels provisional.
Absence becomes practical. Distance becomes necessary—not because we don’t love, but because attention feels risky when survival feels uncertain.
Beneath the Bend
What once carried life now carries fear.
Fear of loss.
Fear of disorder.
Fear of falling behind.
Fear reinforces systems, demands oversight, and normalizes compliance—not because people are cruel, but because the world has been built to survive shortage.
That’s why so many of us feel watched but unseen, measured but unmet, included but unheld. The world functions, but it doesn’t feel like it belongs to us.
The beam hasn’t broken.
But it is bending.
What I’ve Come to Recognize
I can feel that bend now—not as theory, but as weight.
For a long time, I thought I didn’t know what it would take to set it down. But I’ve felt it before, in moments where nothing scaled, nothing optimized, and nothing needed managing.
Just presence.
Close enough to be held.
Near enough to be seen.
Not a system.
Not a fix.
A return to proximity that restores what fear replaced.
That’s the weight I recognize now.