A Story of Sufficiency

Here was a moment in time when it really did look like there was not enough money. In fact, if we did not do something fast, there really and truly would not have been enough to cover our expenses due. This is what we call structural scarcity. The scarcity – the feeling of not enough – is not in our mind, so to speak; there is a real lack of available resource, in this case, money. But it is tricky because real lack can meet perceived lack and cause havoc. And this, of course, happening: I was scared. Scared beyond what was real in that moment. Fear was telling me I was in grave danger.

Do you remember the court scene in A Few Good Men?

Tom Cruise’s character: Was Santiago in danger?
Jack Nicholson’s character: Yes.
TC: Would you say he was in grave danger, sir?
JN: Is there any other kind?

Which, in factual reality, was not true. So in my situation, while there was structural scarcity, there was also the scarcity that pervades our consciousness, and I was dealing with both at once.

Crazy as it may sound the antidote in that moment to my perceived lack was to give something away. So with marching orders from my business partner inside this sufficiency experiment we are always running, I walked into the food pantry I drive by every day to drop my daughter off at school, and I handed the director a check for 10% of what was in our bank account that day. It felt like sticking my head in the mouth of the dragon, dramatic, I know, but it did kind of feel like that.

I came face to face with where my real scarcity met my perceived scarcity, and something shifted. I felt free. I felt like even if the worst happened and we received no more money for some time, and business completely dried up, that somehow I would be ok.

Standing in the lobby of that food pantry, I could feel at once my incredible vulnerability to the whims of life and my power to shape my experience in the face of any of it. Not exactly Viktor Frankl in a concentration camp or Neslon Mandela in Robben Island, but my mini version of standing in the enoughenss of it all in face of both real and perceived lack.