This blog is not about holidays, or pilgrims, or turkey dinner.
Although Thanksgiving does tend to spawn ruminations on gratitude for me, and I
kind of believe one’s level of gratitude determines their definition of what “enough”
means. So maybe that’s the answer to the big question and I don’t need to go
any further. Be grateful for what you have, and it will be enough, yes? Well,
yes, if you can master that practice. And I already wrote that blog. But lately
I have had some experiences that have caused me to ponder the concept of “enough” a little more
deeply, and this title phrase has come bubbling up from my memories of the
countless times “Mary Poppins” played on our VCR when my kids were small. It
was her answer to kids who wanted more, when she had determined they already had
enough. So how much is enough? How much time, how much sleep? How much food, how
much money? How much fun, how much love? Is it possible to have enough and still
feel empty? Well, yeah. It is. But we’ll get to that.
Let’s address the question of time. We all have 24 hours in
a day. I am not the first person ever to say that. We have all been told that
everyone has the same amount of time, and that it’s just about how we spend it.
I saw a movie recently called “In Time” where everyone stopped aging at 25, but
was then given a ration of just one years’ time thereafter. There was a meter
on their arm that measured their time, and they could trade it for other
necessities, gamble it, give it to loved ones, or, if they had the means, buy
more. But when it ran out, you were done. Boom. Dead on the ground. No chance
to borrow a few more minutes to sort things out. No debt in that scenario.
Broke is broke, and dead is dead.
The main character in this film liked to run things close to
empty. (A quality he and I sort of share, but which I am trying to change.) He
was a gambler who was unexpectedly given a surplus of time by a man who had far
too much of it and was tired of living. He was then accused of killing the man
to steal his time, and I don’t think I have to tell you that lessons in “just how
green another person’s grass really is” ensued. So at which point in the story
did this man have enough time? At every point, as long as he was not dead? Or at
no point, because he was continually being pursued by those who wanted to steal
his time?
I found this concept intriguing because I am not so good at
managing time. (Or money, which operates on very similar principles.) I never
have been. So the idea that running out of time could carry an instant death
sentence was a little frightening to me. My current reality consists of trying
desperately to meet online homework deadlines, about 5 nights a week, in
pursuit of an elusive college degree, while also working a full-time job, and playing
the Mom and Grandma Roles. Usually I finish within minutes of the deadline and
don’t always beat it. No matter how well I try to plan, I always feel like I don’t have enough time.
The past 7 years have felt particularly chaotic and
frightening because I have been trying to achieve “enough” in so many different
areas, and am continually feeling like I am falling short. No matter how
surrounded I am by friends and family who love me, I feel like it’s not enough
because I don’t have a partner. No
matter how many healthy strides I try to make, I feel like it’s not enough
because I am too old/tired/whatever to change. No matter this, not enough that,
and so on. We may all have the same number of hours in a day, but some of us
have more persistent forces attempting to steal our precious hours away. Or at least it feels that way. And since time
is the framework within which we try to get “enough” out of life, and money is
the means whereby we acquire most of what we need, it sort of follows that if
we want to have enough of everything else in life, we first have to acquire
enough time and money. But how much is that? Is there a magic number?
I was incredibly blessed earlier this year to have received
an inheritance from my grandmother. It was a big number. A big enough number
that I thought it could change my life permanently if I handled it properly.
Surely with that much money, I could create a lasting foundation on which to
build, and never again feel like I didn't have enough. Well, as carefully and
prayerfully as I approached my choices concerning these funds, they went
quickly. On good things, of course, but I found it to be true that needs will
rise to meet income. My needs and those of my children and grandchildren were
met during a time they would not have been otherwise. Yet I went through this
period of beating myself up because there were so many other things I had
wanted to do with the money that I was not able to. My perspective on what constituted
“enough” changed drastically through this experience. My levels of gratitude and
appreciation for my Depression-era grandparents and their years of
self-sustained provident living have increased exponentially. They took a
garden and a house built with their own hands, and turned it into a fortune for
their posterity. A certain story about loaves and fishes comes to mind.
So if there is an answer to the question of how much is
enough, this is mine; Whether I am paying cash for a reliable car, or shaking
change out of a piggy bank to put enough gas in the tank of that car to get to
work on payday, it is enough. Keeping balance between feast and famine is an
ongoing challenge. On every level. So when
my parents, children, and grandchildren are all in the same room with me, or
when my ex-husband’s family invites me to Thanksgiving dinner and continues to
embrace me as one of their own, it is enough. And it is also a feast. (No matter how
much or how little I eat.)
Real life is similar to the movie, in that none of us knows
when our time meter is going to run out, but as long as we still have any time at
all on the clock, it has to be enough. We have to decide that what we have is enough, and that enough is good enough
to feast upon. Although I think it might not be that bad to stop aging at 25.
