Scarcity.
There is something deeply poetic about arriving in a hustlers city like New York. It’s a melting pot full of culture and socioeconomic hierarchies all strung together under the guise of human nature. New York is a perfect example of what it’s like to live in a constant state of scarcity, often breaking people to their core to achieve their dreams. What happens more often than not is that people move there to chase something they think they wanted in their life. Whether that be money, fame, business, or whatever else it may be. What ends up happening is that immersing yourself in a culture like NYC (and America), you realize you will never have enough to satisfy all your needs, in turn creating an unlimited amount of scarcity.
Scarcity is really important in life, and is a big part of human evolution. What it does for people is introduce a state into the human psyche that causes a sense of lack, need or want that needs to be satisfied to bring the body back into equilibrium. For the longest time it was food, water and shelter. Now it’s more often than not, goals, money, and basic needs (water, food, shelter). When the body is in that state, often a very stressful state, we operate at a rate in which the body doesn’t have time to relax, meaning we become ultra-productive. In these desperate moments is when magic truly happens and it pushes the boundaries of what individuals thought they were capable of. Apple, when Steve Jobs was the CEO, was hell on earth for the engineers that were working there. The reason being is that he kept his employees in a state of constant scarcity, often making them feel like they were already years behind on each of their products. Because of this, they were able to make new phones, computers, watches, and products at rates we hadn't seen before. His ideas weren’t revolutionary, but are now shared by many in today’s economy. I think the reason we see this in tech more than other industries is because the individuals who operate in that space understand that great innovation comes when people feel like they are always three steps behind where they should be (There’s an infinite amount more potential an IPhone has than a Gyro Kebab from Greece). It is also the reason our world feels like time is passing by at an accelerated rate (Read: Evolution of Time.).
When we take ourselves out of scarcity, it’s what I like to consider untapped potential. What untapped potential is to me, is complacency and lack of adaptation. These aren’t inherently bad, and ultimately are the place I think a lot of people want to get to in life (Buy a house and start a family). It doesn’t happen all the time, but I often feel that people put themselves into this state too soon, and never actually see what they are capable of as individuals. Working in service industries my whole life I guess I have a backdoor into people of all ages, and the idea that I hear and what scares me the most, is not being able to know whether I can achieve the ambitions I have in life before this period catches up to me. I see it all the time, especially working in a surf shop. Many people come in and open up to me about their lives, often recalling the things they wanted to try in life but never were able to because of jobs or falling into the complacency/lack of adaptation state at a young age.
A sobering experience I had the other day was when a woman came in with a bright aura around her. She said she had just moved to the area after traveling there years prior with her family. In the trip prior she said that her husband told her that this is where they were going to end up eventually. She was almost brought to tears describing how hard this man of hers worked everyday to fulfill the dream he had of bringing his family back to the beach in California. Often making sacrifices like moving across the country chasing better jobs in order to make it happen. Describing exactly what makes scarcity so beautiful. It isn’t simple and often leads you places you never thought you would’ve been (especially mentally and internally).
This is a call out to anyone who feels like they’ve become complacent in their lives. You have untapped potential you can tap into at any point and time, it might just require a bit of scarcity. You’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.
Thanks for reading.
With love,
Kai
Weekly Poem:
The apple is sweetest when shared with those that need it most.
