The eCrozier

Nothing is enough for the one to whom enough is too little. – Epicurus

When my son John was still an only child of about two and half years, Kelly was away for a few days and it was just us two. I remember making pancakes for supper one night (because I could) and John and I feasted until we couldn’t eat anymore. It was then bath time, but before a book at bedtime, he asked for a snack. I decided to run a small social science experiment (because I could). At our kitchen table there were two chairs. At one place I set a stack of ten fig newtons. At the other, I placed only two. I told John he could sit at either place for his snack. You guessed it. He sat in the chair in front of the ten fig newtons, of which he could only manage to eat two (after all he and I had just wolfed down tons of pancakes). Even at that early age, he had already concluded that more was better than less. He’s wasn’t and isn’t alone. We all believe it. We’re suckers.

There’s a powerful scene in the film, “The Hurt Locker,” where an Iraqi War veteran returns home and accompanies his wife and baby to the grocery store. His wife asks him to go to the cereal aisle to choose a box for the family. He gets there, stares at the choices and freezes. Not a word is spoken. The camera slowly draws back as he is paralyzed by the hundreds of cereal choices. Soon he re-enlists in the army to go back to the war because the choices there are simple and binary: life or death.

Our culture leads us to believe that having more choice is better than having less. But social science research has repeatedly shown (see Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less) that having more choice doesn’t equate to more happiness or life satisfaction. In fact, repeated research shows that an abundance of choice actually exhausts us. And yet, even knowing that reality, we still think more choice equals more happiness. Our brains lie to us and we think that we’ll be different than everyone else. Having more choice won’t exhaust us. We think it’ll make us happy, but it won’t.

Does having over ten varieties of Coca Cola rather than just two bring us more contentment? I think not. This truth is a subset of a larger question about “enoughness.” How much is enough? One wag responded to that question by saying: “just a little bit more than the next person!” In our culture, having more than the next person is the way we keep a diabolical score.

Back to the social science research: It consistently shows that while having more choices doesn’t bring us happiness, gratitude for what we have and for who we have in our life does bring us happiness. Put simply, grateful people are happier people. So, rather than worrying whether we have enough (or more than the next person), maybe we should be wondering: Do we have enough gratitude in our lives? Can we be content with our lives as they are now knowing they will always be messy and imperfect? Are we doing enough to nurture our relationships with others? Are we giving enough love or are we rather always demanding more than enough from others? Can we simply be thankful that enough is truly enough?

+Scott