Enoughness: A Thought for Chanukah and All Year Round

What does it mean to have enough? Is it one more chocolate from the box? Or that new jumper you really want? Or the number of likes to a post? Do you feel enoughness when the whole family is gathered and food, presents and drink is flowing?  Do you feel it right now?

Perhaps we should turn the question around and say - when do you feel a want or a need? When do you not have enough? All the time or just sometimes?

This is a question that is heightened at this time of the year, with Chanukah upon us and Christmas approaching. It is, however, something we are faced with all year round. And so, one answer to this comes from Torah, rather than the Chanukah story. And it comes from Esau, a rather unlikely source, due to his villifaction by the rabbis. After many years apart Jacob and Esau meet again, and after they have embraced and wept, Jacob greets him with gifts. Esau’s response? “yesh li rav”. I have enough. 

Esau’s words are striking in their simplicity, and comfort. He is a changed man. He has enough, he is enough. But that ‘enoughness’ is not something that we necessarily feel, especially at this time of the year. 

The researcher, and wise woman, Brene Brown explains;

“You know, we live in a culture of scarcity, we live in a culture of never enough. You can fill in the blanks; never good enough, skinny enough, rich enough, popular enough, never bestseller enough, [never blah blah enough], never enough twitter followers, never enough, never enough, never enough. What I found…there's only one way out of scarcity and that is enoughness. I always thought before I did this research that the opposite of scarcity was abundance but I'm beginning to think those are two sides of the same coin. 

At some point we need to just say enough, I'm enough, what I'm doing is enough,... is it is fuelled absolutely by our culture, by our media, everywhere we turn there are messages of not enough”.

I think most of us can recognise this feeling of being subtly and not so subtly told that we need something. That we lack something, and if we only buy this [thing], if we only get more of that, then we will feel happy/joyful/content, you pick your adjective. As we know, this rarely happens, instead the feeling of never enough makes us want more.

Brene Brown takes it further and reminds us that it is not only about having enough but fundamentally about being enough. Being enough in ourselves. 

The way out of ‘never enough’ she advises, is something we recognise from Jewish tradition, it's about practising gratitude. Naming, and focusing on being grateful for the bigger and smaller things in life, shifts our focus from the quantity of stuff that we want or feel is missing, and instead helps us realise what we do have, and being grateful for it. 

In the case of Esau, he didn’t need presents, blessings or his birthright back (if that would even have been possible). He did not need to measure his worth relative to Jacob’s. Instead he seems to have become grateful for what he had, without having to compare it to Jacob’s. He might have realised that it is not about what you get or what you have, but being grateful. Yesh li rav - I have enough.

I think most of us understand this, some practise gratitude daily, at dinner tables, when out for a walk, maybe in a gratitude journal. What matters is the continued practice, spending a moment each day finding and voicing one specific thing, person, or event that has made us grateful. ‘Today I am grateful for….’, you then fill in the blanks.

You might have wondered about the culture of ‘never enough’ and have challenged it, maybe even successfully, but it is easy to fall into the trap of wanting to show our love through multiple lavish gifts and food. I’m not advocating not giving or sharing, but rather to think about as we give; ‘what is enough?’ What is enough for you as a giver, what is enough for you as a receiver. And how do we create a sense of gratitude rather than want? So that we can say like Esau, ‘yesh li rav’, I have enough in my life, I am enough in my life.