As I am approaching my 30s, I've developed an innate need to understand certain things with more depth. I need to understand why certain things occurred the way that it did, why some people are so stuck in their habits, particularly why certain people developed such isolating and self-sabotaging habits to cope with their reality, how some people can be so content with so little, why even if there was an excess in money, food or blessings it must always be stored and postponed for later, if and when things get bad . When I take a good, hard look at it, the answer lies, without any oversimplification, ...
...in poverty.
To some extent I think I always knew this, but over the years I unlocked the extent to which people's existence can be so tainted and manipulated by it that, once you choose to open your eyes to it, it's impossible to ignore.
Lack Mindset:
A lack mindset (which you can read about from a Forbes article here) is when you focus on everything you do not already have, than what you already do. Often, those who live in modern poverty, (and I say this because you don't necessarily need to be starving, naked children to be in poverty) , are perpetually dissatisfied with their fate because they grew up believing that everything was within their reigns to change their fate. When they get there, to adulthood, they realise the ingredients get more and more complicated, some of which was never in their hands to begin with. Too much lies on connections, fate, street-smarts, that a degree only accounts for 1/4 of it!
Someone who is always unsure of whether what they have today can sustain will always view the glass as half-empty. Someone who did not have to worry about food in the pantry running out, or been given an allowance of RM10 to last a week in school however you choose to manage it, will always see the glass as half full. In fact, what this means is that, cutting the real bullshit aside, the glass-half-full, toxic-positivity and cult-like optimism is reserved for those whom have been generally blessed in life.
So much so that when blessings pour into your life you become skeptical of how long it is going to stay or what strings come attached with it.
I don't think I can explain to someone who has not experienced it firsthand, how, growing up in an environment where from a very early age you learned that you could not get whatever you wanted and I am not even talking about the luxuries. For example, if you went out to order something, your drinks options were restricted to water, (any derogations from the status quo would elicit the unmistakable indian eyes that said all it needed to without a sound uttered), that in spite of how much less off you were doing than the others you could not show the slightest sign of that, so your clothes would always have to be perfectly ironed or clean. You cannot leave the house scruffily in any circumstances or have clothes with fashion rips on them because god forbid someone gets the slightest whiff of your impecuniosity. That would be game over.
Hoarding:
I think this is an extension of the above, when you don't have the certainty that what you give away can be replaced, you tend to keep toasters or cars which haven't been working for 5 years + because, 'what if you need it some day?
Fixing vs Replacing:
It is also for this same reason that people do not invest in new pairs of shoes even though the current one has a completely exhausted soul to the point that it is a hazard on a slippery surface because they believe in fixing as opposed to replacing. So these are the people who have superglue ready at home, or wear the same shirts for years even though it's clearly discoloured/ has holes and stains, lets their dysfunctional car rot at home than make any attempts to fix it even though it's a gone case -- it's because of some emotional attachment to it. Your threshold of patience is reduced because you already expended too much in the day just doing the basics and getting by. This directly reflects onto your personality and affects your general likability
Bad mood is the default:
Being in a bad mood or unhappy as a default state because of their easily remedied discomforts (if they had money), like not buying an air-conditioner because it would escalate the electricity bills, or being stuck in long hours of commutes because to buy a home that's nearer to your work place is out of question, or not having enough food at home because to feed a family of five to their hearts' content is out of question and everyone just has to work with the pool of what is left.
'Poor' and Unrefined Tastes:
When you are poor and have been for an extended period of time, you don't care if your purple shorts matches your orange shirt because you view clothes as just something that's needed to cover your body, it doesn't have to be tasteful. Someone who wants better for themselves care about the way things look especially what they put on their own selves. This even the rate at which you physically age because those whom have a hard life clearly reflect that in their white hair, wrinkles, lack of money to be able to afford spas , hair treatments, therapy, etc. It's not about getting the most expensive clothes, it's about carrying yourself with candour, so that you get invited into respectable social circles. It's about , with what little you have, buying or wearing the best you can.
You fall in love differently:
When you have to share from a limited pool of resource , it also has a direct bearing on how developed your personality got to be, whether it's an extension of your parents' or a TV character. You aren't given that much room to discover it early on from literature because chances are your hands are tied because there's more urgent responsibilities to attend to like feeding your sibling or paying the house bills. Then, indirectly, when you see the hallmark of all you aspire to be, personified in another person, you fall head over heels for them, much more than it would need to be had you had the room to explore and define your own identity and fall in love with yourself.
Bearing on Intelligence
When you don't have access to money, you would rather conserve what you have left to meet your basic needs like food and transport as opposed to extensive planning for college degrees (or EVEN if you do, you'd have to slave away to get there and work while studying which impacts your patience levels, personality, etc). If they somehow do not have the residual patience to read, they may not have as extensive of a vocabulary. If they do not have the time to spare, they do not have the ability to network or build sustainable relationships with those who drive them to do better in life.
But wait, there's a silver lining.
Character Building
I suppose that the only consolation of living this kind of life is an unparalleled character building involved, an increased threshold of resilience , a perspective on life for what it really is instead of a sheltered existence, which in turn provides a person with street-smarts, the ability to somehow, when you have resigned to the position that there is little you can do to change things, accept your fate, be content with less, (as far as stoicism goes, "AMOR FATI") you will find that you need less to be content. Plus, you learn that, most rich people have an array of problems and dissatisfaction on the flip side that you might have been spared off.
Also, just because you were deprived of the above early on, it does not mean that you will never develop this later on in life which is what makes things interesting. The cards you are born with do not have to be the cards you die with if you have a good mindset.
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When you finally learn that everyone is doing what they can to just live a happy, honest and meaningful life at the end of the day, you resile and brush things off as not being so bad until the next opportunity arrives for you to introspect at what is so flawed about yours.