The ABC's Of A Great Life: "E" Is For Enough

 One way to live an extraordinary life is to understand and embrace the concept of enough. Like the story of the dog in the manger who growled at the livestock attempting to eat, by taking more than you need or can responsibly use, you hoard the blessings of life in such a way that neither you nor anyone else can enjoy them. We all have the right to a sound and pleasant shelter, to adequate and comfortable clothing, to meaningful and sustainable work, and to healthy quantities of tasty and lovingly-prepared food. But none of us, however privileged, have the right to keep these things from another under our own gluttony - our inability to push away from the table of life after a moderate and enjoyable repast.

Ironically, this is the one thing that most of us agree on, but yet the one thing that we seem incapable of doing. Instead, we treat our bodies poorly, eating foods that impoverish both ourselves and the very lands they were raised on, then demand expensive relief and repair when either of these systems fails. We accumulate so many possessions that we are forced into debt and wage slavery to maintain them, let alone continue the process. We actively seek new items to purchase and encourage blindly expanding productivity, not because we need these things (many never leave the original package on their predictable journey from coveted purchase to yard sale discard) but because buying them makes us feel as if we are treating ourselves, keeping up with the Joneses or providing security and benefits for ourselves and our families.

We cannot continue to live like this. Those who seek lives of greatness recognize the freedom and power of simplification. There's simply too much energy frittered away in affording, buying, cleaning up after, and maintaining such a lifestyle to have any leftover for greatness. So the genuinely great pare down to just what they need and love, and not a drop more - unclogging the arteries of their life to allow their divine energy to flow through more smoothly.

Do you know how to stop at enough? Can you even imagine doing so - turning against all the social and personal incentives to buy, to accumulate, and to engage in the drive for more? Look around you - what do you see that you could live without? Just think of how much cleaning, debt worries, maintenance, and annoyance you could eliminate from your life by simply exclaiming, "Enough! No more!" Enough, perhaps to let greatness creep in where excess falls away.