There is a tendency in contemporary spirituality to treat a “scarcity mindset” as something to be overcome. This is reasonable, but there is a risk in its overcorrection.
As in much of my writing here, I’m interested in questioning binaries and considering a middle path between them. It’s tempting to see a scarcity mindset as obviously bad, then to make its opposite, an “abundance mindset,” the good alternative.
Someone oriented around scarcity may feel constricted by anxiety, preoccupied with what they lack, and threatened by other people’s accomplishments in a way that limits their capacity to connect. Their decisions may be driven by fear, keeping them from feeling a sense of authorship in their life. For such people, cultivating a greater sense of possibility can be useful, to the extent that the possibility is real.
A helpful version of abundance thinking encourages us not to let our decisions be guided only by fear. But when taken to an extreme, it can become another distortion.
It’s not a coincidence that many of the people I hear advocating an abundance mindset have abundant resources. It’s realistic for them to view things from the more abundant end of the spectrum. Even for wealthy people, though, abundance has limits, especially when it comes to things that can’t be bought. Time, attention, and our capacity to pursue different possibilities are constraints we all face by virtue of being mortal (unless you’re Bryan Johnson).
Where a scarcity mindset tells us to live as if there is never enough, an abundance mindset might tell us to live as if there is always more.
The middle way between all-consuming fear and disregard for limitation is grounded discernment.
People exhausted by the weight of responsibility might fantasize about waking up in a foreign country and starting fresh, with no attachments. I understand this as an extension of an extreme abundance mindset. If there is always more, then relationships and other commitments can begin to seem insignificant and replaceable.
Buddhist teachings describe impermanence as a fundamental truth of life, but the teachings do not say we’re meant to disregard what is impermanent. Buddhist practice also involves cultivation and nurturance.
Through cultivation and nurturance, things become particularly meaningful to us. Meaning is not inherent in the things themselves, but develops through our attention to them. In this sense, what we cultivate cannot be understood as entirely interchangeable with what comes next.
To recognize that something will not last is not a rationale to invest in it less. Impermanence may even be a reason to invest more deeply. The fact that something is temporary does not make it replaceable, and it might actually be what makes it so cherishabale.
