The Abundance of Enough

“Thomas Aquinas said that while injustice is the worst of sins, despair is the most dangerous, because when you are in despair, you care neither about yourself nor about others.” — Adam Bucko, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation

We are betrayed a thousand times and a thousand ways by our families, lovers, co-workers, bosses, friends, the government, our own bodies…We seek perfection and truth and happiness and life gives us struggle and struggle and struggle. Illness and grief for beloveds, war and poverty around the globe, oil spills and dying coral reefs… in times like these, it is good to be reminded, as vulnerability and shame researcher Brené Brown tells us, “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”

We deserve each other and the abundance of enough that we can offer and receive in community.

American author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (whose fiction I was shocked to find on the shelves of the rural public school library I attended as a teenager — and which I quickly checked out to read before any adults added them to the local banned books list) wrote this poem, Joe Heller, based on a true encounter, which captures a sense of the abundance of enough:

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!

Like Joseph Heller, we can take comfort in a truth that the wealthy death dealers of this world cannot know — that we have enough. We have enough courage to ask for what we need, enough love to offer what we have, enough joy to survive another day, enough grief to know that we have loved and been loved.

Stay together, friends. Trust in our own collective abundance, that we are enough to survive and thrive in this strange and lovely world. Together we can know the gift of enough.