The Curse of Not Enough
Ever read the tale of the Red Shoes, by Hans Christian Andersen? If not, here’s the quick bite version: there’s a pair of elegant, decadent red shoes, and an indulgent, spoiled wearer who can’t resist wanting more than her plain black footwear. At some point, the shoes become cursed, and they force the wearer to dance incessantly, and of course, they won’t come off. To remedy the situation, the exhausted wearer elects to have her feet lopped off (ew). Even then, she still has to watch the infernal things dance around with her feet still in them (ew again).
What does one take from this gooey, disgusting tome? Of course, it speaks out against excess and vanity. I suppose it’s meant to demonstrate that you’re a selfish turd if you choose to put on cursed shoes just because they’re pretty, and so forth. Duly noted.
But the character with the cursed, dancing feet still has limits. She realizes these limits tragically late in the game, but she realizes them, nonetheless. This is cautionary tale emphasizes the vital importance of “enough”, of the switch that needs flipped at some point in our pursuit of “more”, preferably before we need to lose our extremities.
Philosophers and historians tell us that we, as a species, tend to re-enact this story, over and over. Some of us live through the part with the fancy shoes, some of us exist in the midst of the dancing, and some of us have the misfortune of bearing witness to the gross, stumpy conclusion. I think it’s fairly clear that on the whole, we’re fumbling our way through act three. It’s becoming painfully obvious that we may not have the sense of “enough” necessary to halt the process, at least some of us don’t.
This sense of “more” makes us work a lot harder than we need to. It makes us long for fancy red shoes, even when someone tells us what they’re capable of making us do, the bloody, stumpy dance they’re likely to make us perform. “More” makes us see others as pesky means to ends or makes it so that we don’t see others at all. It gives us licence to trash the planet and put our health and wellbeing on the line.
I spend a lot of time these days pondering those who have gone light years past “enough”, the ones with multiple pairs of red shoes, maybe even more pairs than they and their predecessors could ever use in several lifetimes. I wonder if having so much “more” has dulled or even killed their “enough”, or if they just never had an “enough” to begin with. I comfort myself with sentiments like "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gave it to." (Dorothy Parker) and “Some people are so poor, all they have is money.” (Bob Marley). There must be something broken, something wrong with people like that to make them feel entitled to so much “more”, right?
But I have to admit to myself that I like “more” too. I let myself get caught up in the pursuit or shiny new stuff. If there’s one thing the past few years has shown me, it’s that I chase after “more” more often than I’d like to admit. My “more” could come at the cost of the wellbeing of others too, even if it isn’t obvious to me. There are many (increasingly more) for whom “more” isn’t even an option. I’m lucky to even be in a position to make decisions about what “more” and “enough” might look like. My life started fairly close to “enough”.
Lately, my “enough” has started to look very different. I’m still not there, but I’m working on reimagining it, bringing it closer, getting friendlier with it. I’m trying to be honest about how tiring “more” can be, how it can put me and others in harm’s way. As much as I still want to try on those red shoes (some patterns are hard to break), and be invited to dance, I really, really want to be able to step away, happily, and I want to be able to do so with my both feet intact.