I read an article this week on how much money we think we need to make us happy and in it was the phrase “relative deprivation”. I hadn’t come across this notion before, but the writer explained it by saying “we can live in a wealthy neighbourhood or country, but if we haven’t got a new car and our neighbour has, we’ll be unhappy.” To link the words deprivation and new car seemed like an assault on all that is good and true and yet to see the concept there, in front of me, in black and white, made me realise just how honest a reflection on current Western mindset it really is. Maybe even the prevailing mindset of humanity universal.

How often do I utter if only I had more…? Regardless of how I might fill the dots it seems a fairly innocuous statement, but the worldview it belays is all together more concerning. If we stop and think about it, we regularly live with a posture of lack? I just don’t have enough. Enough time, enough money, enough hair, enough patience, enough whatever.

The truth is, that most of the time, we aren’t in lack. We’ve just formed a vision of the good life, of how we want things to be, of what we believe ourselves to be entitled to, that tells us we need more. That pits us against some sibling or neighbour or distant instagrammer and tell us we’re in deprivation. We’re being deprived of what would make us happy. It happens subtly, it happens with some skewed theology of God would never want me to go without but over time we can easily become convinced of our own entitlement to an endless pursuit of more.

The life we tell ourselves that we need in order to be happy becomes the lens through which we filter our reality, and surprise surprise, we so often find ourselves in need of, even owed, more. The problem is that the perpetual longing for more is really just a decision to live in constant discontent. To never actually be satisfied. Springsteen so succinctly puts it

“Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king,
and a king ain’t satisfied ‘til he rules everything.”

That drive for more, that dissatisfaction so often leads us to become someone we never set out to be. The fear of lack is a powerful motivator in keeping others at arm’s length and is the absolute antithesis of a life of generosity and connection. As Merton said, we really are shaped by the ends that we live for.

For me, I have found one of the gifts of spending chunks of time around those who have lived through, or are currently experiencing, actual deprivation is the giant mirror it holds up to my own heart. To sit with those who are wearing their only possessions cannot help but challenge my dissatisfaction with my car or my home or my new coat that doesn’t quite sit right with a hoodie underneath!

It can be jarring but, if we let it, it can be an incredible gift. An invitation to step back from what we’ve allowed life to become and to instead step into what St Paul called the “secret” of being content whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. Relative deprivation, relative lack, has everything to do with where we are placing our attention.

Am I saying we should look at those in poverty and think at least I’m not there? Absolutely not. More can we take an honest look at our hearts, and re-assess what we’re spending our time, money and attention on pursuing in the forlorn hope that it will one day be enough to make us happy. Over the years I have grown to both expect and detest the phrase “there but for the grace of God go I”. It is most often uttered when those of us who have means cross path with those who currently don’t. I’ve yet to give much time as to why it irks me but I wonder if we could reposition it to “here, by God’s grace, is a moment where I can realise how skewed my own desires have become”.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash