A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough Read Free Page B

work . Worse, it invariably leaves us perpetually dissatisfied, always wanting more and more.
    And it gets worse.
    Over the past several decades, our culture has slowly turned these Seven Deadly Sins—these defective, anguish-producing tools—into our own shiny, brand-new Seven American Values.
    Think for a moment. Are these not the values we project, enjoy, promote, sell, and promise as the New American Dream? We’re number one! (Pride) You can have it all! (Greed) Sexsells! (Lust) I just want to be famous on TV! (Envy) All you can eat! (Gluttony) The world owes everything to me! (Sloth) If any bad guys stand in my way, well, bring ’em on! (Anger)
    Food is no longer for pleasure or nourishment but for getting thinner or feeling more comfort. Greed isn’t about guaranteeing sufficiency; it is a fearful grasping for more than we need. Lust isn’t about lovemaking, a sweet touch of the beloved, but about getting more sensation in the body. Lovers become objects. Food is an object. Money, possessions, jobs, network contacts, all become objects.
    When our precious human needs are transformed into objects—indeed, when even friends and colleagues assume the qualities of objects—we can treat them with less attention and care. Objects, by definition, can be traded, bought, sold, even disposed of without much thought or concern. Saddest of all, for all our accumulating and grasping, we are, so many of us, secretly, terribly, thoroughly exhausted, discouraged, and unhappy.
    This New American Dream is like quenching our thirst for contentment and sufficiency by drinking from a fire hose. The new promise is that through commerce and technology there is no limit to what we can accomplish or accumulate. But while we have accumulated more and more goods and stocks and bonds and imaginary wealth than ever before in history, what has not and cannot change is that there is a fundamental limit to what has real value, what we can deeply absorb, use, digest, or ever enjoy. Beyond this point, anything more—whether real or imagined—simply creates suffering.
    These Deadly Sins all have to do with excess. Which is more likely to bring to fruition the deepest dreams of our hearts, theones we invoked at the beginning of this chapter? Finding satisfaction in what we have, or grasping for more than we need or could ever use? Having enough to eat, or eating until we feel uncomfortable and obese? Exploring the endless pleasures of our senses with our beloved, or desperately craving more sexual stimulation, using others as objects, forsaking any love or respect?
    We become increasingly desperate in our craving, reaching for the same ineffective, disappointing tools over and over again, forever disappointed, never feeling we have done, received, accomplished, nearly enough, in part because we stubbornly choose the same, wrong tool for the job. In the end, we feel disappointed, discouraged, unhappy. From there, the leap to concluding that we are not good enough, have not worked hard enough, will never be enough, is effortless, familiar, seemingly inevitable.
    It is not we but rather the tools we have chosen that are defective. Let me be clear: I have no interest here in any moral argument regarding sin as a religious precept. I honor and respect any spiritual community that dedicates itself to creating a world where people’s lives matter, where they try to do more good than evil, do no harm, practice loving compassion and service to others. Indeed, I take this seriously enough that I answered my own personal call to graduate from theological seminary and become an ordained minister.
    For our purposes, I am asking us to take time to listen—deeply, quietly, without hurry or distraction—to the simple physics, the unavoidable spiritual laws of cause and effect, that undergird this one simple question: When we sink deeply into the image of a sweet, loving life, in which we are loved, seen, appreciated, and valued—a life where we have, and