I have enough
Every year, the time of Lent urges us to become austere, to control our desire of
always wanting more, to realise that ‘having’ and ‘being’ are two different realities.
We cannot deny that, in our lifetime, a great deal of concern exists about ‘having’.
We are convinced that our well-being depends on what we own. The entire world of
advertising in our Western consumer society focuses entirely on that.
From owning the newest model cellular phone to wearing designer underwear: ads
show smiling young people who have reached the pinnacle of happiness. Other
continents also broadcast television programmes punctuated with commercials, and
sometimes it takes a while before one realises what the ad is trying to sell exactly.
Asian cities are adorned, or should we say polluted with giant billboards advertising
local brands. Sometimes, the contrasts are clearly visible: enormous billboards
looming over slums where people lack even the barest necessities.
This is the world in which we live: a world of shortage and abundance, where those
who are in need hope and dream to find happiness in owning more material goods,
and those who have enough desire ever more because their greed is never satisfied.
Rich and poor, young and old, greed appears to all races as a strong passion. It is the
passion of never enough, always more.
It is the passion that gives us the illusion that possession is the way, the unique way
even, to find fulfilment in life. When I was in Mumbai, passing through the miles and
miles of slums, where hundreds of thousands of refugees from Bangladesh found a
humble dwelling, I was struck by the fact that so many people were busy all day
trying to survive. They scavenge through rubbish dumps to recycle what can still be
used, and drag it to the slums where piles of rags, scrap metal, paper and plastic
emerge. Then, everything is sorted and sold for a few measly rupees. In this deadend situation, children grow up who only know the slums and the city rubbish
dumps and only see the other world through big billboards. And still we saw many
transistor radio and television sets; a sharp contrast with the surroundings. These
people also dream of better lives and do everything that they can to still have a share
in the consumer goods advertised above their heads. Even though they have very
little to survive, they also feel the urge to surround themselves with goods that are
not necessities of life. With television at least they can dream of what their world
would look like it they had more means. Meanwhile, they do without the little that
they have so as to be able to participate, no matter how limited, in our consumer
society. The blatant advertisements and alluring display windows have done their
work, apparently.
Just like any other passion, having as such is not wrong. The earth is entrusted to
man to manage and to develop it through rightful ownership. Every single person
needs a few basic goods and is called to handle them with care. It is striking to see
how monks managed to deal with earthly good in a very subtle way, which they
already did ages ago. They take care of the earth, they till, grow and cultivate, they
live off the work of their hands without losing themselves in the work. It is all opus
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Dei, the work of God and for God, taking part in the creation, without wanting to
become the master of this creation. The goods that they collect and live off remain
communal, in the service of the entire community. By carefully dealing with these
goods, they have created places of beauty and culture where people enjoy being.
We also know that monastery life deteriorated when more attention was spent on the
goods as such, when they started collecting and preserving more than was strictly
necessary. The passion of ‘having’ thwarted the opus Dei and gradually replaced
God in the work. They were working to own more and no longer to please God. Saint
Francis reacted against this mentality. He made the world rediscover Christ who
lived a poor life himself, who had no stone to lay his head on, who did not keep a
stock or build sheds, but only had faith that every day would take care of itself. It
was a positive experience of poverty in order to be free for God’s gifts and share
more with those who had to experience the negative side of poverty. The passion of
‘having’ was controlled and made subordinate to a profound faith in God’s
Providence and a solidarity that urges sharing.
For this is fostered by a voluntary experience of poverty: a conscious renouncement
to fulfil oneself with material goods so that room would be created and remain for
the one true necessity: God, God’s love, a basic faith that ‘possessing’ God far
exceeds all other possessions. And, at the same time, letting go of everything that is
not vital and sharing it with others, for whom poverty is not a positive choice but a
harsh reality of life.
“God alone suffices,” are Saint Theresa of Avila’s famous words. We are also not
afraid to utter these words yet at the same time we continue to build in certainties in
life.
By controlling the passion of greed, we consciously keep a space open within
ourselves, an existential space. The space is part of man’s nature, in which the desire,
the passionate desire to fill oneself up with the other, with another, with the Other,
finds its origin. And now the question of how man provides an answer for this space
presents itself.
He can try to fill it up with material goods, and this is a road that many people take.
They think that they can find fulfilment in surrounding themselves with goods; vital
goods, less vital goods and completely unnecessary goods. When seeing certain
goods, a strong desire to own can arise, and a great deal of energy is released so as to
effectively acquire them. However, this inner energy, fuelled by desire, is
extinguished very fast once the goods are acquired. And again, the desire for other
goods grows; a desire that mobilises all of our energy once again. No, man is never
satisfied; that desire is never-ending because material goods fill but do not fulfil. The
void remains and has merely been temporarily sedated when one has acquired new
material goods.
One can also try to fill the void with the presence of the other, of others. This desire
for the other is beautifully described in the second narrative of creation. God offers
man all animals and asks him to name them. No animal, however, can fill man’s
void. Man’s solitude can only be broken by another human being. Being together
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with another human being is described as a natural desire, because men are born
from each other: “This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Man
wants to return to his original oneness, as it were, and this is indicated in the same
narrative of creation as the origin of the desire for communion of man and woman.
This communion, no matter how intense, can never fully fill the void that man
experiences within. No matter how intense the relationship with the other, he or she
remains the other, a stranger, a mystery. Man even remains a mystery, a stranger to
himself.
Therefore, it is an illusion to think that complete fulfilment can be found in the
relationship with our neighbour. Something still remains unsatisfied; a desire for
wanting more that cannot be filled, and that can end in utter disappointment when
the other is viewed as a mere means to fill up one’s own void. It is the tragedy of
failing relationships when the other is solely used for satisfying one’s own desire. In
this case, relationships are used to meet one’s own needs and not to please the other.
It is a purely utilitarian interpretation of being together with the other: the other is
used to take away one’s loneliness. And the relationship is maintained as long as we
require it.
When we fill ourselves up over and over again with material goods and relationships
to try and fill the void, it is as though we are constantly fleeing in order not to be
confronted with our true self. By always filling that existential void, we are closing
our eyes to our true reality: man who desires to be connected to his origin and his
destination, who passionately seeks that which transcends him. The void that man
experiences deep inside is a blessed void because it is the place of the encounter with
God. God does not force himself on us; he acknowledges himself by means of that
desire, a desire that only He can satisfy. Saint Augustine said it so aptly: “My heart is
restless, until it rests in you, O Lord.” Every attempt to temper this desire with
material goods or human relationships leads us away from the true Source. Only
moderate use of material goods and an as moderate development of human
relationships leaves enough space so that our most profound desire is not smothered
and our space remains sufficiently empty so that it can be filled with the one essence.
That is the ultimate intention, motivation, reason of an austere life; that one
consciously provides space for God and God alone. Jesus denounces this overconcern with Martha: in the burden of serving, in her being absorbed in her
relationship with the human Jesus, there is no more room left in her heart for the
divine Jesus to speak to her. As such, material concerns and human relationships can
gain ascendancy in life, and then there is simply no more time for God. Martha
complains to Jesus that Mary has left her by herself to do the serving. She finds
prayer and contemplation a waste of time; there are more important things to do.
However, Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better part. She does not fill the void
of her existence with material goods or with material concerns, and she refuses to
lose herself in short-lived, transient relationships. She opens herself to Jesus, to God.
She has the space that Martha does not have yet or no longer has. We can learn a
great deal from these two women. Being able to say: “I have enough” and thus
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putting a stop to our uncontrolled passion of wanting ever more, clears the path, the
unique path to God. “I have enough because God is enough for me. God alone is
enough.” And this austerity has a wholesome effect in our dealing with the goods
that surround us: we are able to share more with others; it becomes an austerity that
urges us to share. Our austerity in relationships purifies these relationships. They are
no longer used or developed to satisfy ourselves but to please the other.
Utilitarianism is removed from our relationships and as such they will gain
durability and intensity. The other becomes the subject of my relationships; no longer
I or that insatiable desire the smother the other in my void. I have enough, for God
alone is enough.
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