Enough

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I write this on Black Friday, otherwise known as the busiest shopping day of the year. Knowing what we know about how “calling in” energy and “naming” it can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy, I find myself wanting to shake the nation like a rag doll and tell it what I tell my loved ones when they speak thoughtlessly: This is NOT a black day! Take it back! Do NOT put such a description out into the universe, giving it permission to reflect back to you!

Black Friday. The origin of the term began in the 1960s in Philadelphia, when police bemoaned the day after Thanksgiving — and beginning of holiday sales — as a snarl of traffic and headaches. Since then, we’ve come to know it as the day sales enter the black for many businesses that have operated in the red throughout the year, anticipating the annual holiday madness that will put things right at the end. Today, capitalism throws a bone to the little folks, while for the Pentagon, Big Pharma, insurance companies and industrial-complexes of all kinds, EVERY day is flush with holiday spending. They no doubt Fa-La-La all year long, but for the rest of us, the joy-joy starts now!

Visiting with my daughter and grandkids here in California, we joined other family members on Thanksgiving, a total of 27 of us. Our yearly reunion found us rejoicing over a couple of hapless, but succulent, turkeys, and trimmings too numerous to mention. Driving to my cousin’s house, my son-in-law went out of his way to cruise by Best Buy, circling the building to estimate the number of people camped out in advance of the midnight opening. At noon, there was a cue of thirty or forty, camping in tents or sitting in lawn chairs. Scouting the possibility of snagging a discounted television, we took an alternate route home at dusk. At another store location, numbers had tripled, lines forming to the side and rear of the massive building, overseen by a uniformed security guard. Deciding to shop via internet instead, we drove home past two WalMarts with crammed parking lots, thinking that a benign sign of shopping excess. Turns out WalMart was scariest of all this year.

For those who think that the economy isn’t calling the tune, we should note that the long-standing rules of Black Friday changed dramatically this year. A number of businesses opened their doors at midnight, others at 3 a.m. WalMart allowed price changes at 10 p.m. on the 24th, which made enough people crazy in Los Angeles to reduce aisles in the electronics department to a pile of trampled DVDs and video games, with injured consumers lost in a cloud of pepper spray. Police blamed “competitive shoppers.” Meanwhile, gun fire and fist-fights prevailed at Wally Worlds across the nation.

All of this has given us a new term to be folded into our holiday lexicon: “shopping rage.” This level of consumption, and the marketing schemes that pit us against each other for a bargain, is crazy-making. I chalk all this up to what I call “not enoughness.” It goes like this: There are only 30 super-cheap televisions per location this season and if you want one, you will need to trample your neighbor because there are not enough for both of you.

Isn’t it amazing how easily we let ourselves be led into this consumption trap? So long as there is only enough for SOME of us, we are encouraged to become gladiators, pushing and shoving and taking someone out at the knees in order to provide for ourselves and our family in acceptable capitalist fashion. Humans will rise to this competitive challenge, even for things they don’t necessarily want. It’s us vs. them, yet again. And what is so very clear to me this year is how words of competition, often found at sporting events, are actually words of war, making holiday shopping and spending just one more mad contest to win if we are to protect our American lifestyle of mindless — and thoughtless — consumerism.

In counterpoint, several occupy Black Friday events occurred this year, with protests, flash mobs and carolers all urging alternatives to shopping glut. So far, I haven’t heard reports of mayhem at their hands, but it’s early in the season. Perhaps the Mercury retrograde will slow down some of our more aggressive instincts, providing just enough hesitation to save our skins and those of our neighbors. Indeed, a major blessing of consciousness in these last weeks seems to be our willingness to remain peaceful and creative within the protest energy. We must continue to let our better instincts inform us as we approach the [r]evolutionary aspects and astrological prodding of this era.

One of the most delightful things about the #occupy movement, for me, is the word itself. We have begun to use the word for everything. My favorite? Occupy yourself. This is so simplistic as to be profound. These are words those on spiritual quests have heard before, but now the whole of the nation will hear, as well. Inhabit yourself. Become authentic. Dwell within your truth. Be who you came to be. The more we are able to achieve that awareness, the more comfortable we become in our own skin, the more self-sufficient and emotionally stable we become, no matter the circumstance.

Best slogan for Black Friday? Occupy your enoughness. Know that you have enough of everything you need to sustain yourself, with plenty left over to help others. Don’t work to change those around you — work to find and eliminate whatever is within you that blocks your realization of that as your truth. Shake off any fears that stick like dryer lint, gumming up the works. Unless we can confront and defuse our financial fears, the sticky energy acts as a blockage to our good, preventing us from attracting the very thing that would help us meet our obligations.

In the book (and subsequent movies) True Grit, memorable dialogue written by Charles Portis has stuck with me for decades. In my imagination I can hear his plain-spoken character, Mattie Ross, reply, when asked if she wanted more to eat, “I’ve had enough, and enough is as good as a feast.”

When we let go of our need to compete for everything, perhaps we will collaborate on a more realistic idea of what plenty is. Everything is changing now, even more quickly than we can record it. What appears to be bad news can actually be awakening news; what appears to be good news will always lift all of us, not just a few. On the day after Thanksgiving, then — and even though the phrase has also been attributed to Ma Ingalls, Will Shakespeare and Mary Poppins — I’ll let Mattie Ross have the last world on enoughness: it’s as good as a feast, and I hope this finds each of you full to overflowing.