Rethinking Enough
A holiday weekend is approaching - and my newsfeeds, the airwaves, and billboards are all shouting out about the latest bargains on offer.
And apparently I need to spend money for the ‘good’ of the economy.
And does that seem to be a shared value that we or the planet can live with?
Every year or so it’s my pleasure to explore The Prosperous Heart, Creating a Life of Enough with a group of people committed to having less and discerning just what we need to have in or bring to our lives.
In good company, we explore our relationship to money, our “things”, and our history.
We also examine our ‘money types’ as outlined by Brent Kessel in It’s Not About the Money.
[Herein ends the ‘call to action’. But should you care to work on your relationship with money and enough - we’re here for you.]
“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
Let’s give over to three poets to explore the upside of not feeling like we need to shop or wish for anything more on the way to contentment.
What is enough?
Let's turn to a modern and an ancient poet to encourage this rethinking of 'enough'.
“Enough”
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.
“Wanting Less”
When the world’s on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world gets off the Way,
they breed warhorses on the common.
The greatest evil: wanting more,
The worst luck: discontent.
Greed’s the curse of life.
To know enough’s enough
is enough to know.
But what will make us feel content?
I'll leave you with what the Marginalian - editor Maria Popova calls "undoubtedly one of the greatest, most soul-stretching poems ever written."
I know that arriving at the place Derek Walcott describes is where I will achieve contentment- so I'll leave you with his words:
“Love After Love”
The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
You can listen to a reading of it here.
Many thanks to Etienne Girardet on Unsplash for the image.
