it's snow wonder

Perhaps now is a good time to talk about excess. The snow last Tuesday night was lovely, muting the harsh tones of civilization without dulling its overall hum. The Baltimore Sun even ran a front page story congratulating all of us for not folding under the press of 5+ inches of snow.

Then there was the Shabbat snowstorm: 20-30 inches of snow. Power outages; heavy, wet stuff that hung on anything and everything; plows that strained; emergency crews who worked til exhaustion. Plowed drifts 10 feet high, blocking the view of on-coming cars. Never mind those streets that have not yet been plowed.

Still and all, we are doing what needs to be done: neighbor helping neighbor; opening and closing buildings, establishments and programs as appropriate; rescheduling life; kids and adults lavishing their unrestrained joy on the well-packed surface of this ephemeral playland.

But just as we were getting used to the scene, the driving, the drifts, more snow! What will we do? How will we handle it? Where will we put it all? Can our roofs support it? How will the homeless, who are used to the more temperate winters of seasons past, cope? This cannot be good. (Well, one good thing I can think of at the moment is that if the snow melts well, we should not have to worry about a drought this summer, neither those of us on public water or those of us on private wells.)

Is there in all of this, then, a lesson about too-muchness, excess, on the one hand and satiety, enoughness, on the other?

Like snow, commodities like food, money, leisure, space, cars, all seem like wonderful things at first. In some ways, if we believe that a little bit is good, then a lot would be great. We are seduced into the false logic of the-more-the-merrier.

True, it is hard to imagine, sometimes, how more money can be a burden; how too much leisure can lead to lethargy; how too much space can lead to emotional distance. But it can. We are not built for excess. If too much is around, we often turn gluttonous and wary, protective and ugly, difficult to please, unable to say, "Enough. I am full". Despite the popular vision of Paradise being a place of unearned bounty, in both creation stories, Genesis 1 and 2, the humans had to work for their survival. Nothing was just given to them.

Study after study shows us that, after the threshold of fundamental needs is met, additional wealth, additional stuff, does not yield additional happiness. Just the opposite.

There is much talk lately of the family that sold its over-sized house, donated half the proceeds to charity and now live a more fulfilling, shared and engaged life in a smaller home.

A friend of mine who recently lost her job is now making a living de-cluttering people's homes! We are constrained by too much, even in a time of recession. We become paralyzed and cannot recognize what to keep and what to throw away. We come to see that we can own too much and still have too little. Like the snow drifts, too much stuff can compromise our view, block our vision, hide the sight of the other coming toward us. Piles that are too big prevent us from getting to all the stuff we own. We can only access the latest stuff that we can reach on top. The treasures that lay buried underneath are not only inaccessible, they are most likely totally forgotten.

It is only when clearing excess away - perhaps even giving it away to those with too little - that we can reach and use all the riches we have.

There is a concept we have spoken about here before: sova, enoughness, fullness on just the right amount. Sova is not about restraint or sacrifice. Sova is about not needing more, or wanting more, or having room for more, because we experience the sense of fullness. We stop wanting more when we are full. Market consultants tell retailers to have large shopping baskets and carts strategically distributed throughout the store, not just at the entrance. People, they explain, tend to stop shopping when their carts are full. The bigger the cart, the longer road to "fullness," the more people will buy.

I believe we are born with a healthy, modest, appropriate set of appetites. Watch a baby eat - they stop when they are full. Life, however, teaches us to stretch our appetites, build and fill a bigger closet, keep up with the Joneses. This inexhaustible capacity for a never-ending, ever-growing appetite is one source of our endless unease. How can we know happiness if we are always plagued by an unfulfilled desire for more?

But to know sova, that sense of enoughness, that sense of satisfaction, is to enjoy a sense of fullness, of calm and purpose. It is, spiritually, to be able to reclaim the way we choose to spend our energies, not in the pursuit of excess determined by the other, a vacuous pursuit that buries what we already have in an endless grab for more, but rather, in a vibrant pursuit of discovery (of self, other and the wonders of the world), of true relationship, of curiosity, healthy progress, and adventures that bring true joy to ourselves and those around us. And in the process, in consuming less, we may discover that there may just be enough stuff for everyone to have enough, and true joy for us at the end of the day.