Just Try To Rip My Legs From This Ground

The gremlin — my dark alter ego who always wants more and believes I’m never enough — is lingering outside my front door. I sense him knocking, demanding to come inside, and I can’t let him in. I can’t go back to when he lived, rent free, as my captor.

“More!” he used to say, brooding. “There are people younger than you who have advanced further. Be afraid of how your savings will be wiped out in a crisis. Your colleagues think you’re weak. Your friends are going to lap you — I heard them talking.”

“Robyn and the kids deserve better than what you’re giving them. Your parents sacrificed everything they knew to come to this country, and you only have this?” he whispered, with disgust.

“You’re not even close to where you need to be. More, more, MORE!!!”

The gremlin doesn’t just want me to keep up with the Joneses — he wants the Joneses to have to keep up with me. As if the only way to stay safe in this world is to be “superior” to others, whatever that means.

How do I stop him? How can I banish him again?

To send him away the first time, it took a decade’s worth of reflection, study, and writing. My book, Character by Choice, is the fruit of that labor. But it won’t work to banish him again through contemplation. I can’t write letters to send him away this time, I tried that already and he’s back.

I need an anchor that lets the gremlin know I’m standing firm — that I’m committed to the life I’m living and content enough to grow at my own, sustainable pace. I need roots that keep me grounded, that help me close doors, and that keep me from falling back into the trap of “more, more, more” because I haven’t articulated what “enough” is. If he sees that I’m anchored and can’t be kidnapped…he will leave disappointed and empty-handed.

Robyn is an anchor. The moment I proposed to her in Campus Martius Park was the moment I committed to a family-centered life — when she said “yes,” I said no to a career of chasing titles, moving across the country, and even running for office. Our home is an anchor. It’s small, and even if we had the money for a flashy renovation or fancier cars, it wouldn’t be valued by the culture of our relationship-oriented neighborhood.

Faith and our church community is an anchor. Our parish emphasizes being welcoming, and actively rejects a culture where piety is compared based on appearances or social status. My sons are an anchor. They constantly prove to me — when they ask to play a game, or ask me to stop working — that my undivided attention is what they’re desperate for, not my money or social status.

These anchors are not words. They are not cheap talk. They are expansive actions. They show the gremlin that he should take a hike — that I’m not giving up these things, not trading them for more. If the gremlin wants to take me on a different path, he will have to rip my legs from the ground and carry me there.

It’s hard to find examples of this among people my age, so I looked to the natural world instead. The ability to be rooted is why I am so in awe of trees. They stay put, and branch outward above and below the ground. They can withstand wind and storms. They stay steady, committed to where they are, enhancing the ecosystem around them with their shade, the air they purify, and their ability to stabilize the ground. You have to rip a tree out of the ground to take it away. Trees are the epitome of rooted.

And I can remember this, and feel this rooting in my body every day. When I embrace my wife in the kitchen, afraid of the failure I’ll be reminded of at work, I’ll feel my feet planting firmly into the tile floor. When I sit with my kids on the couch in the few minutes we have before bedtime, worried about whether we’ll have enough money for Catholic schooling or Griffin’s long-term care, I will feel my back rooting into the cushion and my arm intertwining with their shoulder. When I am in the pews of the church, praying that the Lord lets me lay the pressure I feel to be more, and the heaviness of my responsibilities, at his feet for a little while, I will feel my knees burrow into the ground below me.

In these moments, I will let this feeling in my body remind me that I am anchored, like the trees are. The gremlin will not walk through my door and take me captive, as he once did — because I will be rooted.

Is abundance enough? How much is enough?

Friends,

I’m really excited for both podcast episodes this week. I hope you enjoy them.

In the first, I was remembering a play I was part of in high school. Woody Allen’s God. One of the satirical elements of the play is the Greek chorus in the play calling for Deus ex machina - “God in the machine” - by name to save everyone.

Will the abundance that innovation creates save us all? That’s a question I asked myself directly when writing Character by Choice.

Do we need to care about goodness and character? Would we be okay if we had a world full of abundance? Perhaps obviously, I didn’t think abundance was enough because I kept writing the book.

Link to S2E4 | Abundance.

I’m equally excited about this week’s audio reflection. Years ago, one of my best friends - Jeff - and I were talking about money. He had heard a book or podcast about money in the Bible and shared a question he was gnawing on. How much is enough? Not even theoretically, but what would the actually dollar amount be?

It’s a question that’s stayed with me for years and the main subject of this week’s guided audio reflection.

Link to S2E4.1 | How much is enough?

I hope you have a good week. If you’re in the US - don’t forget to make a plan to vote or complete your absentee ballot.

With love from Detroit,
Neil

Surplus and Defining “Enough”

The idea of surplus is simple, you compare what you have to what you need. If you have more than you need, surplus exists. The concept of surplus is often linked to money or material resources, but I think of it in terms of time and energy.

I’ve thought about the question, “What am I doing with my surplus?” before. But I’m realizing that I’ve missed a more fundamental question: “How much do I need? How much is enough?”

To a large degree, how much we need is a choice.

If I wanted to live by myself and grow my own food off the grid for the rest of my life, I could probably retire tomorrow. If I didn’t want to grow in my job, I probably wouldn’t have to work as hard as I do - I could coast a bit and do the minimum to avoid being fired. If I didn’t care about the health of my marriage or raising our children, I probably wouldn’t have to put as much energy in as I do. If I didn’t have such a big ego, I probably would spend less effort trying to gain social standing. You get the picture.

Defining the minimum standard - after which everything else is gravy - is what creates the construct of surplus in the first place. Because if what I “need” only requires I work a job for 25 hours a week, I now have created 15 additional hours of surplus, for example. If it’s unclear what my bar is, it’s hard to know if I’ve cleared it. Until I define that bar, I have no basis for measurement. Defining what “enough” is is half of the surplus equation.

And I want to know if I’ve cleared bar. Because once I have, then I can use that surplus for things I care about - like traveling, leisure, writing, serving, prayer, time with friends and family, gardening, learning something new, exercising, whatever.

I’m realizing my problem is that I haven’t really defined my minimum standard, so I don’t really know if I have enough. And because I don’t know if I have enough, I am stuck in this cycle of grinding and grinding to get more even though I may not want or need to.

This uncertainly leads to waste. If I do have enough, but don’t know it, I might be wasting my time and energy working for something I don’t want or need. If I don’t have enough, but don’t know it, I am probably misdirecting my time and energy on things that aren’t high priorities.

Either way, if I’m not clear on what I need and how much is enough, I’m likely wasting the most precious resources I have - my time and energy.

For so long I’ve blamed the culture for my anxiety around career and keeping up with the Joneses. I figured that it was things like social media and societal pressures that made me engage in this relentless pursuit of more. But maybe it’s really just on me.

Maybe what I could’ve been doing differently all along is get specific about how much is enough. Maybe instead of feeling like I have no choice but to be on this accelerating cultural treadmill, I could really just turn down the speed or get off all together.

These are some of the questions I haven’t asked myself but probably should:

• How much money do we really want to have saved and by when?

• What is the highest job title I really need to have?

• How respected do I really need to be in my community? What “community” is that, even?

• How much do I want to learn and grow? In what ways do I really care about being a better person?

• What level of health do I really want? What’s just vanity?

• What creature comforts and status symbols really matter to me?

• At what point do I say, “I’m good” with each domain of my life? What’s the point at which I can choose to put my surplus into pursuits of my own choosing?

Only after defining enough does it make sense to think about the question of “what should I do with my surplus?” Because until I define “enough”, whether or not I have surplus time and energy isn’t clear. And if it’s not clear, I’m probably wasting it. And surplus is a terrible thing to waste.