Enough: A Magic Word at the Root of Peace | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

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John Bogle, founder of the mutual fund, Vanguard, writes in his book, Enough, “not knowing what is enough leads us astray in life leading to the subversion of our character and values.”

He got his title after overhearing a conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller at a party hosted by a billionaire hedge fund manager. Vonnegut tells Heller that the manager made more money in a day than Heller made over the lifetime of Catch-22.

Heller quips: “Yes, but I have something he will never have: Enough.”
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Enough. One rarely meets anyone who has it. And when one does, one is charmed by a merry twinkle in the eye, a sense of peace and freedom.

I suppose we reach “enough” by voluntarily hedging our lives—deciding how much we will work, and not working more than that, deciding how much money is “enough” and reducing our work hours once we reach that point.

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Financially, my husband and I have reached the point where we are earning “enough” for us, and so are slowing down. We are still expanding our family business (because the laws of business are the same as the law of empires: either expand or contract; gain market share, or lose it) but only very slowly.

Roy was an academic, a professor with a chair in applied mathematics, but life was so busy that he decided he’d had enough. He’s written papers, won prizes, been elected to prestigious things, won numerous grants.

The cruel thing about academic research is that the concept of Enough is foreign to it. There is always more one can do–more papers to read, more papers to write, more connections to make, more stuff in a constantly evolving field to keep up with.

So he could do the same thing for another 20 years, or step off the academic treadmill, and have a slower life with more time for the garden, and the kids, and me, and God. He stepped off, and decided to work part-time in our micro-publishing company.

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There can be a treadmill in literature too, of course. Ars longa, vita brevis is an aphorism attributed to Horace. Art is long but life is short. It takes a long time out of a short life to learn an art. If one is perfectionistic as a writer or artist, enough will prove to be an illusion. You will never be good enough. There will always be more to read, more to learn, more practice. For years, this perfectionism dogged me, sapping the joy out of writing.

I have found peace as a writer by seeking God about what to read, knowing I won’t have read everything, but trusting him to help me to write the best I can with what I have read.

And in blogging, I’ve made peace with the best writing I can produce in a reasonable time frame. Made peace with “good enough.” One might not create pitch-perfect writing, but will have a lot more fun doing it.

The editor Ted Solotaroff who read and commented on my essays when I was starting out as a writer used to say that success as a writer is an exchange of one level of frustration, anxiety, difficulty and doubt for another. As it is in any career. The once coveted recognition is taken for granted, as one begins to crave the next rung on the ladder, and envy those on it!!

So to learn “enough” we need to take our eyes off the external ladder of success, and back onto the private pleasures of writing.

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So what does Scripture have to say about when enough is enough?

A few things. I love this proverb. “Do not wear yourself out to become rich. Have the wisdom to show restraint.” Proverbs 23:4.

Jesus cautions, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”

And then there’s Jesus’s wonderful parable of the fool who built bigger barns!! He lives in the future tense. “I will build bigger barns. And then, I will say to myself, take life easy, eat, drink and be merry.

God calls him a fool, because in fact, death overtakes him before he does any of these things. And God interrogates him, “All these things you have stored for yourself, whose then will they be?”

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I liked the New Yorker cartoon which shows vulturous relatives gathered as a will is read. The will says simply, “Being of sound mind, I have decided to spend it all now.”

There is something sane and healthy about that, though I would not like to die with my finances quite so neatly balanced. “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’schildren,” Proverbs 13:22 An inheritance is a sweet and magical thing–goodness one hasn’t earned!!–and to bless your children with it that plays a part in people working for longer than they need to.
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For me, the only way to learn the meaning of enough is to surrender my use of time to God—to try to make the most of the gifts he has given me, within the constraints of a balanced life–and to leave the success or failure of my enterprises to him.

And learning the meaning of enough opens up many things–time for relaxation, time for friends, time for hobbies. Time to simply be.

The concept of enough has a particular piquancy for me because I find it hard to know when enough is enough, whether it is with buying books, or plants for my garden, or laying off the chocolate, or stopping work on something which fascinates me, or placing boundaries, or …. whatever…

Fortunately, for those born restless, like I am, there is a source of Enough.

“Thou hast made us for thyself, Oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you,” Augustine wrote.

There is rest, there is enough, in Infinity, in God, who has Enough, and Enough and Enough for even the most restless spirit.

And only his infinity can satisfy our infinite spirits.
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And ultimately, one can decide one has enough before the voices of fear might say it’s prudent, because of our faith in God who is enough, and has enough. Read this lovely short except from Heidi Baker’s There is always enough.