Having Enough (In a Have-It-All World)

Thanks to my friend, Naomi, who sent me this powerful video that’s truly the essence of Having Enough. Please take a minute to watch; it’s short and well worth it.

If you are reading this, chances are you have not only enough but so much more than enough. If you want to help out the majority of the world’s citizens who don’t have enough (as in, live on less than two dollars a day), check out the End Poverty 2015 Campaign, part of the UN Millennium Goals.

It’s so hard to know where to start. Just wherever we are, I guess.

Thanks to Sharon for sending me this Salon.com article, which harkens back to the classic “Having Enough” discussion of how we define success and “enough” in an overachiever, uber-consumer culture.

The article is a Q&A with author Pamela Paul, as Salon describes:

“As the market for infant products grows ever more absurd, author Pamela Paul takes on $800 strollers, Gymboree and the bamboozle that is Baby Einstein.”

You get the idea. Challenging the “need” for all this crazy stuff (more, more, more) for our kids. Challenging the marketing machines and their “research” on what kids need. Challenging the values. Challenging the producers and consumers, and the choices we make.

Right on.

My brother and I (we’re 15 months apart) are the eldest grandchildren in a large family (well, family gatherings on each side are about 25 people, so whatever size you consider that). We’re both in our mid-30’s (he’s pushing late, I’m still mid!). Many of our cousins are in or just graduating from college.

Now, as several cousins have graduated in the last couple years, and another couple are graduating this year, I’m noticing a trend. Many of them are starting out making more than my and my husband’s current household income. Starting out. At 22. Making more than we make now.

Granted, they are engineers, architects and accountants to our teacher/writer cultural-creative-type existence. But, one has created a highly successful cheerleading mix and choreography practice — certainly creative — and his MySpace page says he earns, well, between equal to and more than we earn.

Does this bother me? Honestly, no. I’m really OK with it because I’m OK with my life. More than OK. I like my life, and we’re not wanting for anything (except, perhaps, some extended family in town to babysit now and then — maybe some of these cousins will pick SoCal?!).  And, I’m happy for them and really proud of them for getting educated and doing productive and satisfying work.

But, is it a little strange to think about this income equation? Honestly, yes. These are kids I remember as newborns, who I held and burped and rocked to sleep. And their starting salary out of college rivals mine as I approach mid-life.  Even the ones still in college seem to have a standard of living (read: disposable income) that’s more than I ever had, even at my top salary days as a corporate copywriter.

I suppose it’s strangest when it comes time for housewarming or graduation gifts, and I’m supposed to be the “elder” helping them get them started in their adult lives. And, really, I can afford less than they can.

To them, $50 gift cards to Crate & Barrel or Amazon.com are expected.  To me, that’s more than we’re spending on our own kid’s holiday gifts this year.  It’s too much. And, yet, to them it’s in keeping with their standard of living. And, they are working for the money (well, most of them).  I don’t begrudge them their desire for $50 gift cards; I just can’t afford them.

What I think I’m going to start doing is just writing something for each cousin — a memory of who they were as a child, in relation to who they are upon graduation.  Maybe send a small token with it. But it will be something I found at an outlet store or craft shop, not a whopping gift card. The great part is, I think they will appreciate it. And, if certain ones don’t, they have plenty of other $50 gift cards to focus on.

For me, I’m seeing that a big part of “having enough” is not worrying about the expectations of others, and not focusing on comparisons to others. Even when those others are the “little” cousins I babysat, who are now taking over the world.  I can truly be happy for other people’s success (especially these young family members’) and yet not feel compelled to participate in their standard of living.

It takes a little more effort to write a long letter, or find a bargain trinket of good taste, and send it to them.  But I hope, in the end, it will mean something — perhaps even more than what they had asked for.  And I hope it sends a message that we can all be content to live within our means, whatever those means may be.

These cousins are graduating into a vastly different world than I graduated into, less than 15 years ago.  I have a lot to learn from them. And, maybe, just maybe, they can learn a little something from me, too.

Have you seen any of the news coverage on the recent interview with the biggest lottery winner ever? Jack Whittaker was already a millionaire businessman when he won the $318 million jackpot, but the 59-year-old claims, now five years later, that the large and public increase in wealth destroyed his marriage, lost him his friends, intensified the troubles of his granddaughter, who then died of a drug overdose. Basically, he says winning the lottery ruined his life.

Now, there are a lot of issues to untangle in this story, the first of which is that obviously this man had troubles before winning the lottery; they were just amplified by the windfall. But, I bring his story up because it rings to true to other stories we hear about lottery winners — that the “dream-come-true” windfall doesn’t necessarily solve a person’s problems, and may actually bring more sorrows than joys in the long run.

I flash back to my days as a college resident advisor, when I was in charge of a women’s floor in an international dorm. Burned in my mind is the image of a young woman, from a working-class Cuban-American neighborhood in Florida, sitting on my single dorm bed crying so hard that her contact lenses poured out of her eyes with her tears. She was telling me about how her father had won the lottery, and this event had basically torn apart their community and their family.

Money was never a big topic in our house, growing up. We didn’t have extra, but we had enough to get by. We were necessarily frugal, but also fine, is the message I received. I’ve learned, through my experiences, that this is where I’m actually most comfortable. Having more doesn’t make me too much more happy (and in fact can sometimes bring more anxiety), and having less doesn’t actually make me less happy (of course, I’ve always had enough to get by).

There are now studies that actually back up this idea. Psychologists have found that money only improves happiness if it takes people out of abject poverty. Otherwise, once we have enough for food and shelter, extra money has does not make us empirically happier.

Ironically (as I started writing this post three days ago), today at my Unitarian Universalist fellowship (a liberal, interfaith congregation), a guest minister from Northern California, Rev. Erika Hewitt, spoke about happiness. Her goal (with a background in psychology herself) was to explode cultural myths about happiness, particularly those that say if we just think a certain way, we will be happy, and we have total control over this thinking.

Rev. Hewitt quoted current psychological research that says we are each born with a baseline of happiness, and whether we win a million bucks or lose our limbs, after a period of elation or melancholy from such extreme events, within about a year we tend to return to our baseline happiness, throughout our lives. (She quoted from the book Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, which I plan to check out.)

If this is true, could the lottery perhaps attract people who feel dissatisfied with their lives, and think a jackpot would solve their problems — then, after they win, they return to their baseline outlook and find they are still basically dissatisfied and unhappy? Or, would a generally happy person win the lottery and discover they were no happier a year later, either?

One of the themes of big winner Jack Whittaker’s story is that he blames the lottery win for his problems. A psychologist friend of mine was telling me the other day that this blaming on events, too, may actually be in part an inherent trait — this one of anxious people. For example, if an anxious person observes a drowning, she will become afraid of the water — blaming the tragedy for her fear. If a less anxious person observes the same event, she may not internalize it that way, and will still love swimming thereafter.

So, the question is still outlook or attitude, just how much is in our control and how much is hard-wired? Can we change our basic happiness, anxiety level, or outlook?

I’ve sat on this post for a few days and now have new info to process (and a toddler giving up naps), so I’m just going to put it out there while I have a moment, a bit jumbled I apologize, and see what comes of it. Since I don’t have a pithy closing for this one — no wise thought to conclude with — I will end with these ponderings:

What do you think winning the lottery would do for your happiness, immediately and in the long run? What role does money play in your own fantasies or life story? How much do you believe you are in control of your reactions to life’s events? And, who wants to read Stumbling On Happiness with me, to explore this infinitely complicated issue further?