Enough Is As Good As A Feast: TweetsGiving 2009

For the next few days, I’m participating in TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on in a few days. Please indulge me with this post about gratitude.

When I travel, I will leave behind a spacious office with several computers, high-speed Internet access, several desks and comfortable chairs. I will settle into “portable office” mode.

Portable office on the go.

My workspace will be my lap, as I sit in two airports. Sometimes, my workspace is a professional office with ample computers, printers, cubicles and phones. Sometimes, it is the table in my dining room, a table at Starbucks, or the porch swing on my front porch. Or maybe it’s the desk in my den.

And, you know something, it was fine. It was enough. I got my work done. In fact, looking back at the years of work, I remember most fondly the times I had to make do: sharing office space with several others, turning a closet into a small office, typing elbows-in on airplanes, working at restaurant tables, scouting out plugs and telephone jacks in hotels, finding quiet corners in busy airports, even using pen and paper.

I don’t want to over-dramatize such making-do. Compared with what famine and war victims are enduring, it is nothing. My point is that enough is indeed enough, or as my friend would say, “Enough is as good as a feast.”

Enough is as good as a feast.

That is a hard lesson to learn. Many of us are raised in a world of “more,” where wants become necessities, minimums are unacceptable, and our goal isn’t to avoid excess, but to find a secure place to store excess. Entire industries exist for the purposes of creating a demand for more, managing more, protecting more, proclaiming more, and justifying more.

This is a dilemma for people. Chasing more requires us to ignore giving wealth away to those in need. Hunting treasures keeps us from dying to self. Hording keeps us from enjoying the gift of giving.

Ancient texts talk about a wandering generation receiving manna in the wilderness with explicit instructions that: enough is enough. Take only what is needed for the day. The one exception was the sixth day, when they could take an extra day’s worth, so that they could observe rest on the next day. The point of the extra amount wasn’t to accumulate more, but to make sure they had enough for the seventh day, their special day to remember who they were.

By making the leap from enough to more, and then working 24/7 to achieve it, we enter into that spiritual amnesia which loses true identity and sees self in possessions, accomplishments and worldly status.

It would be better for us if we were content with enough and set aside time to rest, rejuvenate, consider those in need and give when we have more than enough.

Today, let’s help those in need get “Enough as good as a feast.”

Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.