Book Review: The Art of Enough

Title: The Art of Enough 

Author: Becky Hall

Date: 2021

Publisher: Practical Inspiration

ISBN: 978-1-78860-288-4

Length: 253 pages

Illustrations: graphics by Daisy Mojave Holland

Quote: "One of the concerns that people have expressed to me about the concept of Enough is that it represents mediocrity – settling for average – not trying hard."

Even some of the blurbs from people who've recommended this book seem still to be thinking of Becky Hall's ideal of Enough (capitalized, since it's being considered as an ideal) as a way to console ourselves for not having, doing, etc., "more." Blurb writer Kate Bottley recommends it as "helping you to ditch the guilt about failing and falling short." This would be a mistake. The ideal of Enough being discussed here is about personal liberation and joy. Not living in poverty, and not feeling enslaved to the pursuit of riches. Not renouncing worldly possessions, but having only those you want to keep. Not isolating self from others or defining self in opposition to others, but recognizing the benefits for self in having a healthy, balanced relationship with others.

This is a good place to throw an idea that seemed to be trying to become a separate post, a few months ago, and didn't. One paragraph may be enough. A few years ago, North Americans were discovering the Swedish word lagom and saying that it had no English equivalent. Americans would never wish someone "an average day," someone said. Actually English does have a close equivalent to lagom--our word "fair." We think of "fair" as having such different meanings that it could be considered as two or three different words that happen to look alike, but those means were once connected. Ir means what is normal and appropriate and satisfactory, as distinct from excellent. Fair trading was at least something people wanted to associate with fairs as gatherings, though that sense of "fair" originated in a different source. Fair weather was not adverse or dangerous to human activity. A fair complexion was the kind the average person in England has, not really pale blonde, not dark, and not ruddy of skin or reddish of hair either. Fair hair is the kind that is blond in childhood, darkens to brown in young adulthood, and fades back to blond in old age. Before "nice day" became the popular phrase, people did indeed look forward to, and wish one another, fair days, fair weather, or fair sailing. 

What makes this relevant is that, even while Americans vent resentment at being scolded by Europeans as young as Greta Thunberg, this book is not actually about something that's European-as-opposed-to-American, even in terms of history. It's about an ideal of balance, temperance, justice, and prudence, that has rewarded those who've pursued it in many times and places. The ideal of Enough is for everybody even though, in this British book, it's presented in terms familiar to people who've been accustomed to self-identifying as Europeans. 

Not that the author has neglected the value of giving a book written in English an international appeal. There are several references to U.S. writers and thinkers, some to Australian, and some to voices from other countries with large English-reading populations. 

In this guide to the pursuit of Enough as the goal, Hall discusses seven "arts," none associated with actual creative work. The three "arts of being enough" are the mindset, permission, and presence of "Enough." The two "arts of doing enough" are cultivating "Enough" boundaries and resources, a healthy balance between life and work. The two "arts of having enough" are "Enough Growth" and "Enough Connection," which sounds as if it might be an affirmation of small towns and uncluttered social calendars, but is actually about planning growth and connections with the ideal of Enough in mind. 

And what do these generalities look like in practice? Despite their implications for people who are not focussed primarily on problematic emotions, Hall chooses examples that focus on that. A woman seeks "life coaching" with a goal of learning to project her voice better and generally be a more effective speaker (page 50). Hall hastily redirects her to familiar ground, the family counselling of the 1970s: which person in the family of her childhood thought she could or should have this job, and which one thought she couldn't? Such redirection worked for some people, and apparently works for this woman. It's also one of the old cliches from the Age of Therapy that are most easily ridiculed and used to belittle everyone in the psychology department; but let that pass. How does the concept of permission to want and have Enough work for the person who really wants voice coaching, speech coaching, and/or help preparing and presenting speeches? In the 1970s too many psychotherapists really thought that, if people weren't enmeshed in the neurotic thinking patterns that shaped their problem emotions, they would magically "discover within themselves" all the information and experience they needed to do whatever they wanted. There are people whose deployment of their existing resources is being locked by emotional confusion, but we meet fewer of them than, perhaps, our grandparents did. By now I think more people have found it more effective to "Fix Facts First--Feelings Follow." 

I have met people who don't seem to have learned anything since 1971 and who might benefit from a little vintage-1977 attention to their Erroneous Zones of thought. However, even in the 1980s I remember feeling that trying to fix my feelings about being unemployed and ill, with student debt, was going to be a hamster wheel exercise, and then stumbling on a library book that actually explained a thing I was doing wrong--certain intonations of the voice were generally heard as offensive rather than being part of a regional accent, and I could benefit from not using them any more. I've had flashes of psychological insight into my emotions, too, but never one that's been either as thrilling or as useful as a new insight into the facts of what I'm doing, or trying to do. 

U.S. and U.K. uses of English seem to be converging over the years, but there are still a few phrases that confuse people on the other side of the pond. Toward the end of the discussion of being Enough, which strangely seems to lack any practical advice on how most of us might set about that task, we come to one of those. On page 60 Hall asks readers to define their identities with "If you were a stick of rock, what would it say in the middle?" The secret of embedding harder and softer crystals of sugar in the middle of a stick of rock candy does not seem to be known in the U.S. The image is that, as the candy gradually melts into the consumer's mouth, from begnning to end the candy always has some tiny inane phrase such as "Present from Brighton" spelled out in those bits of sugar. Anyone reading the e-book edition can open a tab and look up this kind of thing.

The "stick of rock" metaphor was not opaque to me, but the rehash of emotion-focussed psychology put me off. By the end of the Third Art section I was about ready to dismiss this book as one for the people who managed to miss the benefits of the Age of Therapy. I need to mention this because it was such a pleasure to find the rest of the book more relevant to people with thoroughly processed emotions. 

"Doing Enough" seems more promising but the discussion seems confused. Hall writes in one breath about working out what you, the reader, want to do, and in the next breath about taking a flock of birds as a model for life--the birds follow the three simple rules of matching each other's speed, following another bird, and not bumping into one another. Is she telling readers to follow Thoreau's "different drummer" in their own minds, or to follow the crowd and conform? She seems to leave it up to readers to interpret the fact that she is, inconsistently, recommending both. Nevertheless, this section may be more useful to people who've already processed their emotions to the consistency of casein knitting needles. Readers are encouraged, after resolving the initial contradiction of this section, to think about practical ways to set boundaries, refuse requests kindly, and set priorities among tasks. Hall discusses burnout and the possibility that, when people feel that they have to work overtime all the time, they've encouraged others to expect too much of them because that fed an excessive ego need to be "bigger" than others. 

"Having Enough" presents the radical example of a couple who decide at the beginning of a year how much money they want to earn, and, having earned that much, use the rest of the year for other things than earning money. Hall quotes U.N.-funded Donella Meadows: "Growth is one of the stupidest purposes ever invented by any culture. We’ve got to have enough… we should always ask, ‘growth of what, and why and for whom, and who pays the cost, and how long can it last, and what’s the cost to the planet, and how much is enough?" 

It's valuable to consider the source of discussions of "having enough." When individuals decide how much work, money, promotion, etc., is Enough for them, the experience is liberating. When other individuals decide how much is "enough" for them, the experience is definitely not liberating. In offering equal representation to countries and cultures that lack experience or even the concept of functioning as democracies, the United Nations became a dangerous organization that needs to be kept strictly in its place as a mediation office. Studies that purport to show that "the happiest nations on Earth" are the ones where people don't actually have what they want, or much hope of getting it, but do live in fear of penalties for expressing discontent, can probably be ignored. 

From the U.S.-centric perspective that some readers of this website prefer, The Art of Enough may be sounding like a subversive enemy document. I ask those readers to consider the facts of history. The United States did not, in fact, reach its position as a world power by a "consumer economy" based on waste, greed, and debt. Our ancestors followed the economic wisdom of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Jackson, both of whom knew a good deal about saying "no" and "enough." The late twentieth century's "Waste Age" culture of deliberately wasting irreplaceable resources started, as Hall mentions and as older writers expounded in detail, as a temporary effort to whip up the postwar economy. Thinkers like Vance Packard did not expect, in 1963, that the Waste Age could possibly last as long as it has; they'd not be surprised by the increasing hints that we really are starting to run out of valuable things to waste, that it's time for frugality to make a comeback as a crucial part of American Democracy. 

Although this book may also appeal to people who oppose all that they stood for (good ideas being for everybody), in the True Green tradition I've inherited from George Peters and Wendell Berry I say: I believe Becky Hall gets the point.