Last Thursday night I was the featured author at the Transylvania County Arts Council Open Mic Night. It was an honor to be asked, and I thoroughly enjoyed speaking. However, the best part of the evening was listening to other writers from the audience present snippets of their own work. A poet, a 73-year-old writer reading from her debut novel, a retired Episcopal priest reading “What is a Real Priest?”, another writer sharing a painful and personal passage from a work-in-progress, and a retired physician who had lived in Honduras for ten years as a medical missionary.
As always, I was amazed at the different voices that creativity birthed in written form. Every writer is different, whether writing in the same genre as I do, or writing in genres that seem like foreign countries to me. And in Brevard, where the “majiks” meet and the ley lines cross, creativity seems to have taken form in every way imaginable – Writing, Music, Art, and not to be forgotten, Craft Breweries. I had no idea of the talent living in this town of less than 7500 people when I moved here 9 years ago.
But, back to last Thursday night.
The physician read from a memoir about her time in Honduras. She shared with us how she struggled with what to give away and what to keep when she left Boston for the tiny and impoverished Central American country, where her Honduran apartment was deemed luxurious because she had a closet. Enough, she wrote, is a decision, not an amount.
Enough is a decision, not an amount.
Seven small words cosseted amongst hundreds of others in the passage she read. Seven small words which have haunted me since I heard them three nights ago. Seven small words which I cannot remove from my mind.
Enough as a decision is a concept that had never occurred to me. Ever. And I’m not sure enough as a decision is how the majority of us envision the meaning of that word. Well, at least the majority of us who have been given the blessing of American abundance. Yes, poverty exists in the U.S. just as it does in Honduras, but not like it is there and in other impoverished lands.
All during my formative years, and certainly during my professional working years, there never was enough, even when there was excess, because in western culture enough is never enough – we strive for the fat bank account, the big house, the fancy car, the expensive vacations, the overflowing closet full of clothes. We are never told that enough is a decision, not an amount. It was then, and remains now for so many, an alien concept.
Believe me, I’m no saint. I’ve acquired, and acquired, and acquired with the best of them. But when those seven small words floated across the room last Thursday evening, they pierced my soul. I knew without a doubt that those seven words encapsulated truth in the smallest of packages. Seven small words that in an instant changed what I thought about “enough.” Seven small words that have changed how I think about my life.
Enough is a decision, not an amount.