How Much Is Enough?
My friend Rick started it all.
Rick is a psychotherapist and founder of a nonprofit that documents the relationship between mothers and their gay sons. In talking about mother-child relationships—and who can’t relate to that?—he said something about one mother’s efforts being “good enough.”
“That’s not very high praise,” I said.
“But it is,” he argued. “It wasn’t perfect. But it was good enough for him to thrive, to grow, to see himself positively, to become the man he is today. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enough.”
It’s a concept I’ve never given much thought to, but more and more in these days of scarcity and fear, of uncertainty and pain, I’ve come to value the concept of “enough.” Enough isn’t second-best. It isn’t oh-well-better-luck-next-time. It is the fulfillment of our needs. What could be better than that?
But we don’t think enough is good enough. We live in a culture that can be best summarized in one word: more. We link happiness to more, to acquiring the thing we don’t have—the new iPhone, the new relationship, the raise, the vacation home, that next step up the corporate ladder—and we manage to believe, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, that once we possess this “more,” our lives will be complete and we will finally be happy.
With everyone around us in the same pursuit, we don’t just long for our own “more,” we stack up what we have against what everybody else has. The co-worker who got the big bonus, the cousin who got engaged, the Facebook friend who has an apparently perfect life, the neighbor with the shiny new automobile: suddenly our own intrinsic concept of enough gets flattened. As soon as we look to others to help assess what enough is, we end up wanting more. When researchers looked at the question of when people feel their house is big enough, they saw people find value in a larger house only until someone on the block builds a bigger one.
And I learned recently to my chagrin that I’m just like them.
Along with countless others, I am struggling financially because of the coronavirus pandemic. I’ve lost roughly two-thirds of my income, but due to my highly specific circumstances, I qualify for none of the federal, state, or SBA forms of relief. I’m not starving, but I’m hurting. and do you know what? I was okay with it. I’ve always been one to make do with what I have.
But then I listened to people talking about their unemployment checks and the extra $600/week pandemic bonus they’re receiving, and suddenly I was depressed and angry about my own situation. I could just about manage it when I viewed it in isolation; but when I started comparing my income to that of others around me, I found I really wanted that elusive more. I no longer believed I had enough.
It was a sobering realization. My family of origin was wealthy, but in all my years of adulthood I’ve congratulated myself on not particularly wanting “stuff.” On looking for fulfillment in other places: in my craft, in my work, in my friendships, in my reading and thoughts. And here I felt all those years crashing down on top of me, because I was jealous. I wanted more.
So this concept of enough—it’s a slippery one, a fragile state, that like everything else worthwhile needs to be tended and cared for. I really do have enough. I am not dying. I am not ill. I have a roof over my head, For heaven’s sake, I’m writing this on a computer connected to wifi—that alone puts me out in front of about 80% of the people on the planet.
So what I’m concluding is this: It takes a good deal of bravery and skill just to keep our lives going. To persevere through life’s challenges? That’s heroic. We need to step back and acknowledge that, no matter what others may or may not have, we have enough, and our lives are good enough, and that is a very grand achievement.