Transparency as a Path to Healing

The recent announcement by Malaysia’s Economy Ministry, led by Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir, marks a significant shift in how the nation approaches economic equity. Rather than establishing a rigid, absolute wage target, the ministry is focusing on enhancing transparency and fairness in salary offers. Acknowledging a median wage of RM3,600 and existing disparities, particularly among the Bumiputera community, the strategy aims to ensure that wages reflect workers' actual contributions and meet their specific living expenses. By considering factors such as location and household size through the Perceived Adequacy of Household Expenditure indicator, the government is prioritizing contextual fairness over static numbers. While this is an economic policy, its underlying philosophy resonates deeply with the human experience of self-worth, suggesting that true value is not found in arbitrary targets, but in honest assessment and transparent acknowledgment of one’s reality.

For years, I operated under a different economic model for my soul. I believed in fixed targets. I set absolute figures for my self-worth: a certain amount of money in the bank, a specific level of social status, and a curated image of success. I thought that if I could just hit these targets, I would be safe. I would be worthy. I would be enough. This mindset led me to coordinate high-end arrangements for the wealthy, to trade with family funds without permission, and to build elaborate personas to hide my autism and my trauma. I was paying myself in false currency salaries of arrogance and bonuses of denial, believing they would cover the cost of my past. But like an economy built on inflated assets, the deficit kept growing. The gap between who I pretended to be and who I actually was widened until it became a chasm I could no longer ignore.

Minister Akmal’s approach offers a wiser alternative. He recognizes that fairness is not about everyone receiving the same arbitrary number, but about ensuring that compensation matches contribution and need. He acknowledges that a worker in Kuala Lumpur has different expenditure needs than one in a rural area, just as a person carrying fourteen years of guilt has different emotional needs than one who has lived without a secret. My own internal "wage" had been woefully inadequate because it was based on a lie. I had tried to force a single standard of perfection onto a complex, messy reality. I had ignored the "location" of my trauma and the "household size" of my many conflicting identities.

The ministry’s emphasis on transparency is particularly poignant. Greater openness in salary offers ensures that workers receive fairer returns for their contributions. Similarly, greater openness in our personal lives ensures that we receive fairer returns for our emotional labor. When I finally stopped hiding behind NDAs and started speaking my truth, I was engaging in a form of personal transparency. I was acknowledging the disparity between my actions and my values. I was admitting that my "median wage" of self-respect had been depressed by years of secrecy. By bringing this into the light, I allowed for a reassessment of my worth based on reality rather than illusion.

Furthermore, the focus on equitable opportunities for younger and diverse workers mirrors the need for self-compassion. I am no longer young, but I am diverse. I am a victim and a perpetrator, a liar and a truth-teller, broken and whole. An equitable approach to healing means allowing all these parts of myself to exist without one erasing the other. It means recognizing that my "contributions" to my own life include not just my successes but my survival. It means adjusting my expectations to match my actual capacity, rather than an idealized target.

Ultimately, the Economy Ministry’s policy suggests that stability comes not from controlling outcomes, but from clarifying processes. We cannot always control the global market, just as we cannot always control our past. But we can control our transparency. We can choose to be open about our needs, our locations, and our sizes. We can choose to assess our worth based on what we actually carry, not what we wish we carried. In doing so, we move away from the fragility of fixed targets and toward the resilience of honest valuation. And in that honesty, we find a currency that never devalues: the peace of being truly seen.