Scarcity mindset, abundance exit

(fuck hope, and why I had to leave home to find it)

A few weeks before I decided to burn my life down and start over, I was tangled in the kind of online argument that makes you want to throw your phone into the sea. It was a thread about the Israel-Palestine conflict, which in Malaysia, quickly spiraled into a debate about boycotting Starbucks and McDonald's.

People were calling for boycotts to support the Palestinian cause, but their arguments were a mess of flawed logic, religious gatekeeping, and economic illiteracy. Someone argued we should support a local chain because its Chinese owner *might* be more sympathetic than a global corporation that pays zakat. Another chastised non-Muslims for not caring about a "Muslim issue."

I jumped in, of course. I couldn't help myself. I pointed out the hypocrisy of calling for boycotts that would only hurt the local Malaysian employees, most of whom were just trying to make rent. I highlighted the absurdity of judging a company's morality based on the religion of its owner while ignoring the multinational supply chains that implicate everyone.

It was pointless. I was using logic in a war of pure emotion. Every point I made was met with deflection, whataboutism, or accusations of being a bad ally. It was a perfect microcosm of the national disease: a conversation trapped in a never-ending loop of race, religion, and outrage, where critical thinking goes to die.

This wasn't an isolated incident. This was the air I was breathing. It was the constant, low-grade psychic exhaustion of living in a place where mediocrity is celebrated as long as it's the *right* kind of mediocrity. This cultural fatigue became painfully obvious every time I compared the energy in Malaysia to my trips to Thailand.

It's about the simple things. In Bangkok, you can walk up to a bubble tea stall in Siam Square and watch a teenager make your drink with the flair and focus of a master mixologist. The label is straight, the lid is sealed, the cup is clean. If she gets it wrong, she'll remake it without you even asking, because to give a customer a subpar product is to lose face.

In a KL mall, that same transaction is often a study in indifference. The staff might be distracted, talking to a colleague, barely making eye contact. The drink is slapped on the counter, maybe overfilled. There's no social shame attached to the lack of care, so the baseline of quality drops. It's just a job.

This extends to skilled work. In Chiang Mai, I saw a tattoo artist spend six hours on a single needle session like it was a sacred ceremony. He barely spoke, his focus absolute, because his reputation was etched into his client's skin forever. In KL, I've felt the rushed energy of a studio more concerned with getting the next person in the chair than getting the current design right.

It's not about passion versus laziness. It's about how deeply shame is wired into execution. In Thailand, your output is your identity. In Malaysia, we have the "cukup makan" mindset: get by, don't stand out. Playing it safe is culturally rewarded. We outsource our grit. We hire foreign workers to do the jobs we deem beneath us, then complain when they crowd the city on their days off. We've subcontracted the nation's hustle, and in the process, something in our own spirit has eroded. We want the output, but none of the ownership.

That's the rot. It's not just the corrupt politicians or the failing infrastructure. It's the decay of the discourse. It's the feeling of being gaslit by your own country, told to be grateful for scraps while the game is rigged against you. And that rot, I realized, was starting to get inside me.

I was becoming a person I didn't recognize.

Lately, I'd been angry. Not the productive, righteous anger that fuels change, but the bitter, reactive kind. The kind that festers online. I was picking fights, scolding strangers, arguing with idiots like it was my job. I was becoming that guy, the one who leaves scathing, multi-paragraph comments, who thinks he's on some holy mission to correct everyone's stupidity. A keyboard warrior with a superiority complex.

A Karen.

The self-awareness was brutal. I saw myself doing it, and I couldn't stop. In those online debates, I was fueled by a toxic cocktail of frustration. I was enraged by the flawed logic, infuriated by the blatant hypocrisy, and exhausted by the sheer futility of it all. I knew I was screaming into a void, that no one's mind would be changed, but I couldn't resist the urge to prove I was right. My intellect, which I always thought was my greatest asset, had become a weapon I was using to bludgeon people in comment sections and Whatsapp groups with friends. It was reactionary, not strategic. I was wasting precision on peasants.

That's the danger zone. When the anger becomes the mission. When you get so used to the taste of outrage that you seek it out. I was turning into a walking embodiment of the cynical fatigue I was trying to escape. I wasn't building anything. I was just barking.

The turning point came at an Airbnb in Genting Highlands. I was there for my nephew's birthday, chilling with family, yapping about my frustrations, with work, with Malaysia, with the world. I was in full rant mode, probably recounting another pointless online debate.

Then TJ, my brother-in-law's brother-in-law (I KNOW), a level headed but complicated dude who doesn't say much, dropped two lines that cut straight through my bullshit and shut my brain up cold.

First, he said: **"We live in abundance, but our mind is trained in scarcity."**

That hit me like a punch to the gut. I had been operating like the world was a zero-sum game. Like every dumb post, every ignorant comment, every broken system was a personal attack, a theft of my peace, my resources, my sanity. I was acting like a dog fighting over scraps, blind to the feast all around me. I had the privilege to build, to create, to leave, an abundance of options, but my brain was stuck in a defensive crouch, trained by a culture of complaint and limitation.

Then he delivered the second blow: **"Intellect is a tool, not a privilege."**

That one cracked me open. I had been treating my intelligence like a badge of honor, a free pass to be condescending. I used it to prove I was better, to win arguments, to feel superior. But a tool isn't for showing off. A tool is for building. A hammer isn't proud, it just hits the nail. I had a powerful tool, and I was using it to smash things, not to construct something new.

Those two sentences, delivered in the cool mountain air, slapped me harder than a decade of books and podcasts. They revealed the truth: the problem wasn't just the world; the problem was my operating system.

Suddenly, a memory clicked into place. A WhatsApp conversation with my friend AM. She's one of the most resiliently hopeful people I know, and in a moment of peak cynicism, I had snapped at her.

"Fuck hope," I had typed. "Hope cannot pay my bills."

At the time, I thought I was being a realist. But after TJ's words, I saw it for what it was: the voice of a man drowning in a scarcity mindset. I wasn't mad at her hope. I was threatened by it. Her belief in abundance felt like an attack on my carefully constructed world of lack. So I tried to burn her hope down, too.

I wanted to message her from that Airbnb in Genting and apologize. I wanted to explain that I finally understood. My fight wasn't with hope; it was with a broken part of myself that I was only just learning how to see.

But I didn't.

That epiphany became my exit strategy. The decision to become a digital nomad was no longer just an escape. It was a deliberate act of choosing abundance. It was picking up my intellect, not as a weapon, but as a tool to build a new life.

For the past two months, I've been living that choice. And it's… a trade.

You trade the comfortable chaos of home for the clean, transactional clarity of a foreign country. In Thailand, no one cares about your race or your politics. They care about your Baht. It's raw, unapologetic capitalism. And honestly? It's a relief. Sitting at a plastic stool on a busy Bangkok street, the air thick with the smell of grilled meat and diesel fumes, you're anonymous. There's a strange freedom in that.

But you also trade your history for a blank slate. You trade the muscle memory of ordering your go-to comfort food on Grab for the endless, alien menus of Foodpanda. You trade inside jokes and shared context for surface-level conversations. Instead of craving home, I developed new, stranger obsessions. I lived so close to the Chiang Mai airport that I built an app to alert me the moment a plane took off, just so I could have two minutes to sprint to my balcony and try to capture a perfect, impossible shot: the plane flying dead-center through the gap in my ancient, circular apartment building.

This place was a relic compared to the modern condos in Nimman. It was built for Thai people, but now it was full of 6-foot-plus foreigners like me. The walls were so low I kept hitting my head. The balcony railings came up only to my waist, a constant, quiet reminder that one wrong step could turn you into another statistic for the expat suicide numbers. I wasn't just living in a new country; I was living in a space that was actively hostile to my frame, a physical manifestation of not belonging.

I just came back to KL for a short trip. The moment I stepped out of the airport, the humidity hit me like a hot, wet towel. I told myself it was for family and business, but while waiting for my Airbnb to be ready, fate played a twisted joke. I bumped into an old friend, a guy who had also been targeted by my stalker.

"Are you running away from her?" he asked, half-joking.

I laughed it off. "Nah, it's not like she can physically harm me, it doesn’t fit her psyh-profile."

But the question stuck. Maybe I was running. Not from her, specifically, I have zero fear for my safety. I was running from what she represents: the quiet, creeping insanity of a city I no longer recognize. A place that feels like it's getting smaller, more claustrophobic, full of ghosts and their dramas. In Thailand, I am just another passerby, blessedly anonymous. In KL, I see my own reflection everywhere.

But the most visceral reason for my return? The food. The first night back, I had Hokkien mee from Jalan Alor. The next night, nasi lemak. Then wantan mee. Then rendang. It wasn't just eating; it was a desperate act of archiving. I was trying to burn the memory of each taste into my brain, because when I leave this time, I have zero plans to return. I haven't figured it all out yet, but I know that much.

And that's the nomad's bargain. You escape the things that are killing your soul, but you will always ache for the things that made it, sometimes so much that you have to come back one last time to say a proper goodbye. You choose abundance, but you learn the true cost of what you left behind.

This whole essay isn't a "fuck you" to Malaysia. It's a breakup letter to a version of myself I was becoming.

I had to leave to realize that hope isn't a passive feeling you wait for. It's an active choice. It's a practice. It's the conscious decision to override your scarcity-trained mind.

• Hope is booking the one-way ticket when you're terrified.

• Hope is navigating a foreign city with Google Translate and a prayer.

• Hope is using your intellect to build a new system for yourself, not just rage at the old one.

• Hope is the act of building a new life from scratch, because you decided you were worth the effort.

• Hope is coming back for your mom's food and knowing you have the strength to leave again.

I didn't leave because I had no hope. I left to find it.

And I'm still looking. Every day. In every bowl of noodles, in every new conversation, in every sunrise over a city that isn't mine but feels, for a moment, like it could be. It's not easy, and it's not clean. But it's mine. And for the first time in a long time, it feels like enough.