The American culture constantly reinforces "You never have enough." Look at the Madison Avenue messages that constantly bombard us. We are manipulated to operate from an "I need it" position. I once read a story written by the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy asking the question, "how much land is enough?" I want to share my abridged version with you as food for thought.
In Russia there was a serf who was a share-cropper (or the Russian equivalent). He did not own any land nor did he have the hope of owning any. One day he found out that the widow whose land he was farming was willing to sell it on the installment basis. He was over-joyed. He borrowed, worked and saved to get the down-payment and bought forty acres. The next year the crops looked so much better because they were grown on land that he owned. For a few years he was so happy, but then by chance a traveler came by and told him of some more land which was even richer and crops that were better. This disturbed the poor fellow greatly. He couldn't get it off his mind until he went over and checked on it, and he sold his forty acres and started paying again for a bigger tract of land. He farmed successfully but a sojourner came by from a far country and told him about natives who owned tremendous areas of mesa land perfect for farming and had no knowledge of its true value. He told him that he could give some tea and trinkets and a little money to the chief and get all the land he wanted. This stirred his greed to such an extent that he took off with a servant, finding that the report was accurate. He set a time with the chief to measure the land, but, much to his surprise, the chief said they could measure only by the day for they had no other way of measuring. Their way was to let a person walk from daylight to sundown and the land he covered was what he got. He could buy a day's worth. That night he could hardly sleep. The next morning before daylight he was up with his servant and met the chief on a little knoll looking out over wonderful land. The agreement was that he would take a shovel and turn up a spade full of dirt as he went along to mark his land. Immediately he took off, estimating how far he could walk, but as he got to the point where he felt he should turn back he saw another beautiful piece of property that drew him forward. He doubled his pace, marked off the additional property and started back toward the knoll where the chief and the tribe were waiting for him. As you can imagine, he had bitten off more than he could chew and so the sun was going down behind the knoll when he was a few hundred yards away. He threw away his canteen, his shovel, his coat, but the sun touched down on the knoll before he got there. But the chief and his people were applauding him because the sun had not yet set where they stood on higher ground. He put on a burst of speed and got there just as the sun disappeared. They were congratulating him when in utter exhaustion he fell over. They noticed a little trickle of blood coming out of his mouth. He was dead. His servant dug a six-foot grave and that was how much land he had earned.
He didn't know how to define enough. It isn't easy. For what are you trading your life? Is that last burst of speed truly your last? Defining when enough is enough may be a life decision, so make it a good one.
