After the Feast, Enough: “Sunday musings…” 12/1/2024
“Enough is as good as a feast.” Sir Thomas Mallory in “Le Morte d’Arthur”
Welp, here we are on the last day of the Thanksgiving weekend, my favorite holiday of the year, careening toward Christmas, the polar opposite of holidays. Giving and receiving; wanting and needing. The season that epitomizes the mantra “the only thing better than enough is more.” More lights, a bigger tree, another dinglehopper for your collection. More that seems to beget, well, more. I sit here chuckling over my keyboard as I prepare to extol the opposite of more.
I’ve just spent more than an hour scrolling myself deeper and deeper into the rabbit’s hole of “Best Gifts for…” shopping lists.
Still, I think it bears stating that “enough”, at least here in the Western World, is a meaningful concept for contemplation in this, our most covetous of seasons. Let me stipulate at the outset that “enough” does not apply to everyone in the U.S. (or in the countries of the couple of you reading my drivel x-U.S.), but if you are reading my stuff it most likely applies to you. We could do worse than to return to the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence in which the forefathers of our nation declared the “inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The needs of a free people are encompassed in the first two of those, liberty and life. To be free of the tyranny of forced servitude. Access to food, shelter, clothing, and in our modern world access to some (albeit difficult to define) baseline level of healthcare. These I think we can reasonably agree are “needs”.
It is in the “pursuit of happiness” that we come acropper, both for ourselves and on behalf of others. We could call this column “wants”, those things that we desire, sometimes painfully so, that do not rise to the level of need. If we examine this through the lens of the food need, I believe that we can agree as an example that we need to consume protein. By and large the source of that protein is not a significant factor; we simply need protein to survive. The beef in a standard McDonald’s double cheeseburger is nutritionally no different from that to be found in Beef Bourguignon at your local French Bistro. We need protein; no one needs to have it come packaged by a Michelin-starred chef. Similar thought exercises exist for clothing and shelter. While considerably more complex, and beyond the scope of today’s “musings…”, the same applies to healthcare.
Which brings me back to “enough”. When you have enough, when your needs have been effectively covered, and a significant number of your wants likely handled as well, it becomes easy to see the brilliance of Mallory’s allegory. I imagine awakening to each morning, rising from my bed and beginning the new day as full as I was when I somehow managed to lift myself out of my chair after the Thanksgiving feast. I move into my day, and when I’m on my game I do a little bit of level setting on the want/need continuum. I admit that I can covet as well as the next guy, and that this is sometimes harder than other, but here’s what I learned once upon a time that helps:
Want what you have.
Really, I’m just everyone else, especially at this time of year. 60+ years of Christmas conditioning, both on the giving and receiving ends of the season. For example, I’ve been completely sure, totally and utterly convinced, that Beth and I need new phones and new laptops. Dead certain. Need. And so in preparation for those purchases, in order to “survive” until I ordered the new additions for my already Apple-cluttered universe, we updated all of the software and operating systems on our existing iPhones and MacBooks. Lo and behold, we were already in possession of “new” stuff. Sharper screens, faster processing, and battery storage all miraculously and dramatically better. Maybe not new stuff better, but way more than either one of us needs at this time.
Which leaves me quite content wanting what I have, and therefore on to the last of my three core beliefs about enough. This one a true core belief in general. One that has stood me well over the decades that have passed since I first found it and adopted it as my own from “The Tao Te Ching” and Lao Tse: the man who knows when enough is enough will always have enough. Think about it for a minute. You’ve figured out how much is enough. Every minute of every day is like having a seat at the banquet table. Each breath as filled with enough as Mallory’s feast. Sure, for all the work that you do wanting what you have, you can still have room for a bit of “want”. Kinda like an two scoops of ice cream or maybe a slice of apple AND pumpkin pie after the feast.
It’s OK. You know you don’t need it. You know you have enough.
Giving yourself the gift of enough, of knowing that you have enough, is perhaps the loveliest gift you can give not only to yourself but to those you love and who love you. Enough leaves you room for joy. Joy for you and for others. Enough gives you space to be grateful. Enough for you allows you so see first whether those you love have enough, and if they do it allows you to think of what they may want more than what you may want. You’re covered. You’re good. Enough is what let’s me pivot from the joy of family and friendship that I love so much about Thanksgiving to the joy that comes from the giving of the next holiday. Indeed, that particular joy may be the one thing outside of love that is the exception to all of what I think of when I think of “enough”. Thinking about that is why I’m still bathing the the glow of Thanksgiving on Sunday.
That, and the complete certainty that I have had enough pie.
I’ll see you next week…
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