When 'enough' should be enough

The way we use the word, “enough” means bare minimum: Good enough for government work, tall enough to ride the roller coaster. Who wants be thought of as “enough” of anything? Nobody.

More, better, faster – that's more like it. And it's a good standard when you're talking about some things, like, say, emergency response times.

Trouble is, we don't limit our drive for more to the stuff that really matters. It bleeds into every corner of our lives, from the exotic vacations we've taken to the books we've read to the square footage of our houses - we want more.

I've been thinking about that since I picked up John C. Bogle's new book, “Enough.”, which talks about the 2008 financial crisis as being, at heart, a failure of ethics.

But it's not just high-flying financial types who got caught up in the thrill of more. This downturn has hit so hard partly because before it did, most of us had been spending every dime - and then some. Now that the bill's come due, it hurts.

Experts say we're headed for another round of home foreclosures, this time prime borrowers - folks who bought houses they could afford but are can no longer make the payments. They can't sell because they owe more on the house than it's worth. They're stuck.

Nearly 2.4 million Americans with prime loans are delinquent on their mortgages right now. The non-profit Center for Responsible Lending has predicted we may see as many as 9 million home foreclosures between 2009 and 2012.

That's a financial disaster, but it's more than that. It's a crisis of the American dream. Stay with me here, I'll explain.

The house where I live is the size of the house I grew up in, when there were four of us sharing the space, that house the same size as the house where my grandparents raised five sons.

Bit by bit, we've been climbing ever since my great-grandfathers stepped on to Ellis Island. We hardly even thought of it as progress. It was just the way things were supposed to be - every generation was supposed to have a little more.

But there only is so much time and space and money. I guess we should have known. So in an age when that kind of growth is uncertain, how do we define success?

Bogle's book is about business, but some of his ideas work here, too:

Think of value instead of cost, he advises. Think about commitment, not things. Think character when you think of success, not the greedy, unending quest for more.

And think about what it really means to have enough.

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