Enough, Already!

There is a saying, “Enough is enough and too much spoils.”  Living in a country like America, it is good to consider just how much our “enough” might be. The boxes packed in my garage bump-out say I haven’t learned the lesson just yet. 

We see a lot of refugees in the news, would-be immigrants all over the globe carrying with them everything they own.  It usually hits us hard that these people have figured out that to live in peace is their “enough.” While we are awash in our things, these people want to see a day free of fear. They have learned the lesson through necessity.

We can be led by example.

Years ago, there was a picture in the news of a man in what was the USSR.  He was dressed as a soldier and he was picking through apples at a market, trying to find a few eatable ones among the small, rotting variety on offer.  Everyone I mentioned that photo to had been deeply moved by it. 

“There was a picture of a Russian soldier….” I would begin. 

Immediately, they would say, “Oh! That hurt me so much!  I will never look at apples and not see him!”

For a moment we knew the lesson of enough.  For a moment we saw how spoiled we are. It was good for us. 

My Grandmother’s farm house did not have closets.  It was large and one room led into the next.  You could shut off rooms to remake the floor plan.  Clothing was hung on hangers that hung on a few nails.   Children grow quickly, so they see a lot of clothing in a little time.  My sister and I wore a lot of sister dresses, mine in blue, hers in yellow or pink. Mother did not make me wear her hand-me-downs.  Mostly, it was just her being kind—she had a sister five years older than her and she hated such things.  The other part was that I was pale and blonde and if she put me in blue she could, at least, find me in a crowd.  So while I was choosing between my mostly blue dresses, my Grandmother was rotating clothing from a nail. Though a child, I could never remember a time in my life when I didn’t dress from drawers and a closet.

Now, of course, like most of us, I have too many clothes.  We see four seasons in this part of the country, and we think we need clothing for each. We do a lot of switching. And we have this notion that we need a “work coat.”  A work coat is what you use when you scrape snow from your walk, your car, your sidewalk, occasionally your roof, and all of the other places it is impeding the flow of life.  It is the coat you use if you have to drive on snow and ice and need to put concrete blocks in your truck to weigh the rear end down.  It is the coat you use to shovel snow from around your tires when you are stuck.  We all have work coats.  But, sometimes, we forget that others do not have a first coat.  When reminded, we go red-faced to our closets and ferret out extra coats that we thought might become work coats.  As I sit here, in summer heat, I know I have at least five winter coats in the closet.  Come autumn, I will have to pull out the extras, sew up any pocket holes, replace any buttons, and take all but one that will be the work coat to the local charities. And, at that, it is shameful to have so much when others have so little.  

Americans are satiated with ads.  The purpose of any ad is to make you want.  What advertising has done to weddings is closing in on sinful.  Brides are told they need expensive pictures and videos, a dream dress and its accessories, an impressive diamond, limos, DJs, a nod to each ancestry, food, cake, entertainment, photo booths, décor for the venues, etc. When my daughter chose a modest diamond, the salesman said, “I know it is what you want; but is it what you deserve?” Fortunately, her husband-to- be got her out of the store without the salesman realizing he was talking to a brown belt in karate. But such is the pressure on us for more because it’s more. Ads create needs and turn us from sensible human beings to people we do not even recognize.  That person we see in the mirror could do with a little doing without.

We need to rethink what we need.  We need to rethink what we want.  And we need to rethink how much of what we have is to impress someone else, to look a certain way, to hold a certain status. Our closets, garages, attics, and storage units are trying to tell us something.  Most of us aren’t listening.

I am trying.  I had boxes of a certain kind of Japanese china called Geisha.  I didn’t need it; I wasn’t displaying it.  It was time for it to go.  I put it on-line for sale.  A lady who spoke very little English wanted it.  We went to a meet in a parking lot.  She drove a broken down car that looked like it was already full of junk.  I wondered that she wanted to add mine to it.  But she said, in breathless tones, that she would like for me to take five dollars off.  She had been pulled over by the police and he had told her she had to have a gas cap.  She hadn’t known that was the law.  So, the new gas cap had cost her twenty-eight dollars. She gave me a handful of bills.  I gave her back five dollars. Sometimes, for our own good, it’s just got to go, whatever the price.