When have you given enough?
I don’t know when my problem started. Maybe when I donated money to a particular charitable organization or signed a petition regarding animal rights. In any event, I now receive emails almost daily from organizations asking me to sign petitions or donate money to protect animals.
At first, I would sign without hesitation. The problem is, I am getting more and more emails, the subject lines and images are disturbing me and I am now letting them pile up unanswered. Should I ask to be removed from the email list, or buckle down and fight harder for what I believe in? Your question is a particular illustration of the world’s toughest ethical question, one that troubles ordinary people daily. When is enough, enough?
When have I given enough? Worked long enough? Eaten enough? Done enough for the cause I believe in? Or, on the flip side, when have I endured enough trying to save this marriage? When have I put up with enough crap from my snotty teenager?
Most often, questions of “enough- ness” (sufficiency is the $100 word) relate to small matters and ordinary worries, but not always. In the midst of terrible suffering, more than one anguished soul has cried out, “My God, haven’t I borne enough pain? Haven’t I lived long enough?”
Questions of sufficiency are rarely easy, because the possibility of “a little bit more” is so compelling; when that prospect is gone, there’s no longer any quandary. But as long as one might give even a little more, work even a little harder or live even a little longer, deciding “that’s enough” can be excruciating.
Like many of you, my wife and I donate to several charities — and we think we give “enough.” But then the call comes from the nice man at UNICEF, telling about terrible famine in a distant land we’ve never heard of. Could we increase our monthly donation by just another $5 to feed a family with five kids for a year?
And suddenly, enough is maybe not enough. I spend $5 every time I buy coffee at Second Cup. How can I claim I can’t afford it? But can I pony up another $5 a month every time the phone rings? Obviously not. And therein lies the rub. Your passion is animal welfare and you’re wondering whether you could do more to help the cause. Obviously, the answer is yes.
Equally obvious, however, your capacity for more is not infinite. Like everyone else, you have limited financial resources and, in your case, limited emotional capacity to deal with the horrible things humanity is doing to those of fur or fin.
Only you can decide where the line lies between what you are doing now and what you are capable of. But the life task, for all of us, is to keep moving that line upwards, in the direction of more, not less.
We are at our best when we build up rather than tear down, and building only happens when we look at what we have/do/give in the present and decide, “that’s not good enough.” Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca