Enough

There are wholes and heaps, says Aristotle.

A pile of stones may look like a single thing,

But it is not. It’s a heap with no real connection

among the individual things that comprise it.

To confuse such a heap with a whole is to misunderstand

its intrinsic non-existence. It has no oneness,

no internal reason for being, no single function.

Just so is the life of continuous acquisition.

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There comes a point when adding more only empties life of meaning. What if the secret to wholeness is not in striving further, but in resting with what already is?

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There is an old story about a man who wanted to be so rich that he would never need more. Each time he reached a goal, though, he raised it: one house, then two, then an estate; ten thousand coins, then a hundred thousand. He was never poor, but he was never at peace. He always lived on the verge of another acquisition, like a traveler who never arrives anywhere. When he died, people said he had everything. But, in fact, he never had enough. He couldn’t because he never let himself learn what enough was.

To know where to stop is an extraordinary strength. Limits are clarifying. They create meaning. Stravinsky once said that there was nothing as fearful as looking into the abyss of a new project: everything is possible, but nothing takes shape until you set some limits for yourself. Until you do, your most strenuous activity is wasted. Even the notion of “lifelong learning” is vacuous. Unless there is a purpose for the learning, it has no more meaning than a solved crossword puzzle. More growth, more productivity, more ambition—but humans are not commensurate with infinity. We are commensurate with finiteness. And that means we need to get comfortable with enough.

There is dignity in recognizing our limits. By doing so, we respect our actual abilities and refuse to burn them out on imaginary infinite goals. To say, this is the limit of my strength, and it is good—that is a form of moral clarity. It is both humility and wisdom.

The simplest truths arrive last. After decades of career striving, a father discovers that what matters is sitting quietly with family at a table. After years of ambitious climbing, an executive learns that her afternoon walk does more good than her next promotion. In hindsight, the simple-mindedness of the realization seems childish. But the simplicity that arises from struggle is not naive. It is distilled wisdom, paid for with life experience. The path through excess and exhaustion seems to be the only way many of us ever come to understand the radical sufficiency of enough.

To say enough is freedom. It is the freedom to stop filling the cup before it overflows, to stop charging ahead before your horse dies from exhaustion, to stop acquiring possessions before you have too many to matter. It is one of the great virtues that make life easier, less stressful, and more fulfilling—the virtue of prudence.

We can liberate ourselves from a lot of the sufferings of life with one word: enough. There is, in fact, no need to add one more thing for you to be whole. You can write the last digits, draw a line under the sum, and close the ledger for today. The cup is full. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

You may rest now, and it is good.