How Much Is Enough?
by Frank Sontag
How many of
you, when you first read the title of this piece, thought instantly of money? I
think it would be safe to say that many of you did. In fact, when I decided to
write about this subject, I first thought of money as well.
How many
times in the course of our daily lives do we think about money? How many of us
think that money represents security? And how many times do we not only obsess
on financial prosperity, but we also fail to recognize how much fear surrounds
our issues related to that green square stuff? Let's face it,
money Is a part of life. But it is a much larger part of our daily
existence here in our western consumer-oriented culture.
We are raised
to believe that if we are financially well endowed, many of life’s problems
will automatically be solved and that somehow we will be insulated from life’s
greatest pain filled struggles. We are also constantly inundated with messages,
in part due to the multi-billion dollar advertising industry, that say financial
prosperity equals happiness and that the more you have, the more freedom you
will attain. We even live in a society that portrays the pursuit of money
as extremely admirable and the American hard work ethic as something akin to
nobility. But tragically the American dream is a nightmare and it is literally
killing us. More people die from heart attacks on Monday mornings than at any
other time of the week and I don't think" we're dying because our
motivations are pure and that we love what we do.
The truth is,
we are sick and unhappy because we are trying to fill up a deep void that
exists in each and every one of us, and our consumerist, greed-filled,
workaholic lifestyles are a desperate attempt to fill that emptiness.
There are
many modes of thought as to where this void comes from. Dr. Harville
Hendrix' work indicates that a kind of wounding has occurred in all of us, to
varying degrees, because in childhood our needs and wants were not totally
fulfilled by our parents and caretakers. The New Age movement says that if we Just build up our self-esteem and enhance our perceptions
about life into positivity, we can then be
transformed into whole and self-loving human beings. And finally, there's
ancient wisdom and spiritual teachings that suggest our sense of alienation and
at times great despair, are rooted in our disconnection from God.
One thing is
for sure, we are living our lives in quiet desperation and we go to great
lengths to deny pain and avoid struggle. We expend enormous amounts of energy in
creating a facade and acting as if everything is fine. But
everything is not fine.
We as a people
live in the 51st state of existence. It's called the state of denial. The Hopi
people have an expression called. "Hoyaanisqatsi" which is
defined as "life out of balance." We are out of balance as a
culture. But even more to the point, we are out of balance as a human species.
There are many glaring examples of this imbalance to which I write. We as
Americans are only a small percentage of the world's population but we use the
overwhelming majority of natural resources and most of the economic wealth in
the
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Humanity
grows more and more, intelligent, yet there is clearly more trouble and less
Happiness daily. Mow can this be so? It is because intelligence is not the same
thing as wisdom.
When a
society misuses partial intelligence and ignores holistic wisdom, its people
forget the benefits of a fain and natural life. Seduced ay their desires,
emotions, and egos, they become slaves to bodily demands, to [usuries, to power
and unbalanced religion and psychological excuses. Then the reign of calamity
and confusion begins.
Nonetheless,
superior people can awake during times of turmoil to lead others out of the
mire. 'But how can the one liberate the many? 'By first liberating his own being,
He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers
himself to that which is simple, modest, true;
integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth.
Completely emancipated from his former false life, he discovers his original
pure nature, which is the pure nature of the universe.
-Lao Tsu, from
the. Hua Hu Ching 2500 years ago
(translated by 'Brian Walker)