Monday, November 26, 2012

Learned Lesson Number Twenty-Five: Enough is as Good as a Feast



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.

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