Scarcity Mentality Redux...

Yesterday I mentioned how I am surprised to find Scarcity Mentality even in the school system. I found it again today in yet another school but it makes more sense to me.

For those of you who don’t know, the Northwest Neighborhood Federation is generously being hosted by a parish that happened to have a mostly vacant building for us to rent. This parish has its own school serving kids in grades Pre-K through eighth. On top of that, they already have a program wherein parents of the students and drop off their kids before school starts and have them watched after school is over so as not to disrupt their work schedules. This program has a cost associated with it and the income is a supplement for some of the school staff (i.e. it is part of their livelihood.)

Recently an inside source informed me that many of the teachers have been gossiping and spreading rumors about our agenda when they had not met with us even once to find out what was true and what was false. Word on the street is that we are here to run their program out of business since the one we are offering will be held at a similar time and in the same building, and is free. They fear we will “steal” their kids.

I had a meeting with the entire staff of this school today to introduce myself and the federation (I find the fact that our Executive Director had not yet made an intro for the federation a little strange but no matter) and to field their questions and shoot down any rumors that were flying about. I really had no idea if I was walking into a hostile den of seething freaks or a cordial collective of reasonable adults. Neither would have surprised me, really, and I was surprised to find the truth more towards the latter than the former.

After a brief introduction and some joking, I began to answer their questions about the specifics of our program, the age of kids we are serving, what we are doing about security especially since the high school kids we are inviting are apt to be involved in gang activity, etc. The majority of my time was spent talking about what we are going to do to ensure a clear separation of our program from theirs and how I was planning on handling any parents who might want to yank their kids out of St. Bart’s program and put them in ours. It was in this moment how I began to understand more clearly how a scarcity mentality could be so prevalent – we’re talking about the income of some of these folks who don’t make a lot to begin with. What I offered them in response was to look at the program through a lens which is the opposite of scarcity – abundance. The Abundance Mentality says life doesn’t have to be such a polarizing state of either/or; that there are plenty of solutions to choose from and ways to work around issues and having two programs in the same location can actually be a blessing rather than a problem.

When I first mentioned it they looked at me as if I had lobster crawling out of my ears. I couldn’t tell if they were utterly confused or if they thought I was insulting them – probably a little of both. But as I explained to them the potential that exists in having two programs side by side and how they could be involved so long as it posed no conflict of interest with the existing program, they began to open up and the slight edge of defense that I first felt when I walked in the room had dissipated.

Some will say that I am simply using optimist jargon, looking for a silver lining where there is only tin or ignoring reality. They are the ones ignoring reality. Scarcity Mentality straightjackets potential and has helped create the world in which we now live. If what I say about abundance makes you uncomfortable, that probably means I’ve hit upon a nugget of truth that deep down you know is right and whose power is so great, it is easier to attack it than to embrace it.