ENOUGH

In the midst of the holiday season with all the extravagance, I was thinking about enough—what a pleasant word.  It actually reduced my tension just sitting with the word.  If a word can be beautiful, enough is a beautiful word.  Enough means I’m okay with where I am.  I’m not looking for more—at least at this moment.  

Our capitalist culture does not like the word because when I am ok with enough—advertisers freak out since their constant drive is to feed my ‘want’ and covetousness.  They know that when I am satisfied—I do not spend—or spend nearly as much.  I am a poor consumer when I feel I have enough. 

Before I go further, I’m not saying that a desire to better ourselves—do something fun, own something beautiful, is bad.  It’s just when desire goes off the rails, when there is no governor on the engine. Then too—satisfaction, ‘enough’ for me is different from enough for you.  When is enough money enough?  When is enough square footage enough?  How much is enough to spend on clothing? On cars? On entertainment?  On travel? 

Wanting, desiring, needing something is another thing.  During COVID, when was enough rolls of TP enough?  Europeans laugh at the size of portions in our restaurants.  When is it enough on my dinner plate?  (Our obesity epidemic indicates glaringly our failure to push back from the table).  Budgeting my money so I can purchase something I like is great. But marketing says why wait, put it on credit.  Several advertisements say, “YOU deserve it!”  Deserving it and getting it aren’t synonymous.  

Many of us grew up with “be ye perfect”.  Enough was not good enough—and far from perfect.  And the ‘perfect’ preached at us was in reality never achievable—ask any creative person—or saint.   

Jeannie and I get a free slick magazine/advertisement aptly titled Franklin, the city where we live in Williamson County.  It is an over the top ostentatious, publication—almost extravagantly vulgar.  Featured homes cost multi-millions with 7000-10,000+ square feet.  The magazine advertises extravagant travel, expensive jewelry, automobiles, entertainment and LOTS of Botox. Yet it is true, we live in Franklin too and we are profiled as such.  Where we live makes a statement about us—supposedly.  But Jeannie and I did not get here chasing the ‘Jones’.  Each of our housing moves were utilitarian. 

Our first home summer of 1971 was a small apartment near the Tulsa University campus.  During the school year it was student housing but we were only going to need it until August when I was to report for Navy boot camp in Rhode Island.  But the Navy bumped my report date back and we had to move. I was to go to Officers Candidate School and become a supply officer.  After more delays the Navy wasn’t needing as many officers (the Viet Nam war was scaling down) and offered a discharge.  By late that year it was near certain that the Army would not reach my draft number (they had the previous year), so I took the discharge after being in the Navy for six months going no where.  I applied for graduate school in Texas and we moved on a bitter cold day in January 1972 to Fort Worth.  Seminary housing was ‘basic’.  The housing was old triplexes where we had an end apartment.  The shingle siding outside was cracked in a multiple places, everything was seminary ‘beige’, I mean EVERYTHING inside and out.  It was  small.  One of my dad’s phrases was ‘you couldn’t cuss a cat in there without getting hair in your teeth’.  I don’t think the cat would have even fit.  That first week, ice was a half inch thick on the inside of the single pane crank windows.

After seminary we moved to Hurst to get closer to Jeannie’s work and school at UTA in Arlington—another apartment.  We lived across from the landing field for Bell Helicopter where Jeannie worked.  After graduation we moved to Nashville for a job.  We longed to leave apartment life so found a house to rent in East Nashville. It was a daylight basement house with a good size lot but had wall heaters.  If you were within 3-5 feet you were warm.  Across the room you froze.  One of my home improvements while there was me installing central HVAC with the coaching of a contractor.  We were there for eleven years. 

The girls started public school at Rosebank Elementary.  Rosebank was a neighborhood, naturally integrated school with lots of parental participation.  A great start for the girls education. But friends began to tell us middle school was a disaster.  So like so many in Nashville we considered private school.  Instead, we decided to try and put the money we’d have spent on private school into an house payment and make an attempt to get into Brentwood schools.  

I was working for a non-profit, Jeannie was working but income still wasn’t what I thought we needed for the move.  There we two streets, both backing up to the interstate where the homes were less expensive.  We squeaked into Brentwood schools.  The girls would come home asking why we didn’t have a pool, a hot tub and the likes.  We told them we were in the Bronx of Brentwood. (my apologies to NYC).  We were there for fourteen years both girls graduating from Brentwood High School.  Ironically, even with such good public schools, many in Williamson County sent their kids to private schools—too often based on status.  

So even though we live where we do, each move has been utilitarian —not for show.  In fact, when we began to consider Brentwood for schools I worried that contributors to the non-profit would think we’d gotten uppity.  When I traveled out of state and others heard I lived in Brentwood I often got a wide eyed response.  

Making a move to Williamson County is the hearts desire of many in Middle Tennessee yet having lived here forty years, I can tell you people pull their pants on the very same way.  Yes the pants may be from Nordstrom’s, but people are people.  More than one client over the years told me they were happiest in their marriage and life when in living in Brenthaven—one of the oldest subdivisions.  As they relocated to larger and more expensive digs life slipped on the happiness scale.  I found in doing marital counseling, when things get testy, either having a baby or moving was often the ‘solution’.  Someone else said such a move only meant you could remain miserable—just in a new zip-code. 

Someone who’d been in our family years ago (divorce) ripped into me last year saying I was always bragging about how wonderful my life is/has been. (There was a fair amount of projection on their part but the accusation was still painful). I had told this ex-family member about a friend years who said, “I want your life”. I was set back when the fellow said it years ago—thinking you know nothing of my life—really.  He was looking only at the outside, the trappings in essence.  In telling my ex-family member about “I want your life”, he heard it as bragging. My life, our lives have been far from perfect.  As one writer put it, “I am a full menu of human imperfection”.  Early married life we would at times dine with friends and drive away complimenting their home or neighborhood. Go with envy if you need to.  Yet none of our moves was for social status—unless moving to offer our girls the best education is seen as social climbing.  If you know me at all that is not who I am. I do love beauty—in all sorts of art, architecture, in landscapes, in writing, in people. I enjoy taking pictures and have over 60,000 photographs on my computer to prove it.  My take is the author—our Creator is behind all beauty if not literally dwelling within it—so the beauty is a connection to our ultimate Being—The ultimate Being.  

I am very thankful for all life has afforded us—through all the good as well as difficult times.  

Yet I do adhere to the statement that you can never go home again.  Once I left that small frame house in north Tulsa, the only one I ever knew, it did not change.  I did.  Even though it was less than seventy miles to Stillwater, I gradually was different.  Education and more travel changed me even more.  My vocabulary grew, I developed my ‘style’ of clothing choices and all sorts of preferences—such as my love for fried chicken livers and chocolate sodas (not together—although I’ve never tried it) .  As I changed the perception of others back home was often not positive—as they saw it I was not like them any longer.  And the truth is, I wasn’t.  Life as it should be for all of us, changed me.  We are not meant to be static.  It was not about feeling better than those back home in Tulsa—although that was the accusation more than once.  

There is a balance in all of life to seek after and yet the very term implies forces are always coming against it—throwing us, pulling us off balance—off center.  The writer of Ecclesiastes was right.  There is a time for everything under the sun.  So I commend you on those occasions you say, ‘enough’.  On those moments you too feel balance—you might circle that date as reference in the future. 

Enough is still a question I ask myself with some frequency, especially on the days we get our copy of Franklin.