When John D. Rockefeller was asked, “What is enough?” Rockefeller‘s reply was, “Just a little bit more.”

We have more than enough and we want to do more, we just don’t have any ideas of what we could do differently. We are living in an age of generosity. More than ever people want to give. They want to help others that are in great need. But too often we don’t know how. We don’t have access to direct needs because our communities and culture have sheltered our lives away from the direct needs of our cities. We have been consumed by a culture that tells us we need more, meanwhile we already have more than enough. We have become cultural slaves to consumerism. It pushes us around. It tells us who is important, what to buy, when to get more, why it will change our lives, where is the best place is to purchase and which credit source you should use to purchase. Still, I have a deep feeling we all want to change this mentality. Isn’t it true that none of us want to be consumed by this pressure that is pushing us around everyday? We want to regain control of our actions. We don’t want to live in a conveyor belt mentality, we want to choose our own steps and experience a freedom of choice. We have each have a unique version of excess and we want to do something good with it, we just don’t know how? We don’t know how to best give it to others that need it. We don’t know who needs it. We don’t have just enough, we have excess.

We can all relate with the response that Rockefeller gave to this complicated question. We never think we have enough. We get what we want, then we want more. When we get more we tend to spend more, resulting in needing more. There never seems to be enough.

What is enough? This may be the most critical question of our generation. We must choose to draw a line in our everyday life. If we do not draw this line, we will be taken over by a cloud of desire. Enough will only be recognized when we choose to define it. Defining enough is my personal responsibility. Defining enough is our opportunity. What if the question “What is enough?” was integrated into the very ethos of our community conversations? How would our communities change? What priorities would change in our use of time and energy? Advocating for enough is our chance to create a huge cultural shift from having unneeded desires to addressing issues of suffering and injustice throughout the world. Advocating for enough could be our opportunity to bring hope to humanity. In an age of more, maybe we could live with less resulting in more for others.