Enoughness

Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, did an interview recently with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee of Emergence Magazine. The reason for the interview was the publishing of Kimmerer’s new book, The Serviceberry.

The book is a manifesto on abundance and reciprocity as models for a new economy that operates in right relationship with the Earth. In the book Kimmerer posits that recognizing enoughness is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.

“Think of all the messages that we get relentlessly from media, from advertising, saying: Well, you know, if you only bought this, then you’d be happy. You need to consume this. 

In fact, our very measure of a successful economy is one that is always growing, which means always consuming more.

Whereas the notion of enoughness— Doesn’t it just make you feel content to think of enoughness?

To say, I have what I need.

I have everything that I need provided for me by the land.

And to me, that just awakens gratitude and a sense of sharing, of saying, I have enough.

And so that means if I have enough, the rest, the surplus, can be shared.

And that notion of enoughness as a radical act really can put the brakes on consumption.

And we know that it is hyperconsumption that has us poised at the brink of climate catastrophe.

And so it’s not only a radical act in an economy, it’s a real act of healing for the land and for people, as well, to say: ‘I have enough. I don’t need to take any more. Which then liberates that abundance for others so that they can flourish too.’”

This concept of “enoughness” recognizes that everything is a gift.

Kimmerer speaks of “gift economy”:

“…(which) is best exemplified in thinking about water.

You know, if maybe when you turn your faucet on, you just think it’s this fluid that’s coming to you from public works.

But if you focus on really understanding what’s coming out of your faucet, you know, that beautiful water—finite in quantity, right, we will never have any more than we do today—that falls freely from the sky and waters our gardens and makes food grow and makes flowers bloom.

This water that can be dew, it can be clouds, it can be snow, this long traveling molecule that animates life all over the planet, without which life simply would not exist.

Oh, now you start looking at water and saying, it’s a lot more than this clear substance flowing out of my faucet.

It’s not an object anymore. It is a gift.

And so when you think about this gift of water, it belongs to all of us.

The rain falls on all of our heads, right?

So why does a corporation have the right to say, this freely distributed gift I am going to filter and put into plastic bottles and sell at a price that’s higher than gasoline?

That they’re going to make all kinds of money over a freely given gift—that seems an ethical travesty.”

“And, of course, think of all of the environmental damage that is done by privatization of water, in single-use plastics, et cetera. But to me, the real crux of that is that water should be a public good, a common good, and not privatized. So that’s just one example of thinking about what feels to me like the ethical jeopardy of privatizing a freely given gift.”

“(This) notion of gratitude, enoughness, and abundance feel so important as an antidote to the endless need to consume. The idea of contentment.”

Good words as we enter the Christmas gift-giving season.

Read the transcript of the whole interview here.