Too Much…

Epictetus left some words on a subject we should like to consider: “See children thrusting their hands into a narrow-necked jar,” he said, “and striving to pull out the nuts and figs it contains; if they fill the hand, they cannot pull it out again, and then they fall to tears. ‘Let go a few of them, and you can draw out the rest!'”¹ Further following this thought, we do sometimes fill ourselves too full. We often complicate our lives with too much that is more or less meaningless, and sometimes seem to acquire and accumulate for the sake of acquiring and accumulating. Possessions with a point and a purpose can be good, as they add to the enrichment of life. But sometimes we seem to overcomplicate every process and procedure. We often work hard at playing, and acquire equipment to the point where it becomes cumbersome, and overload ourselves with the burden of mere things, each of which takes time and attention, effort and energy. From seasoned travelers we well could learn a lesson. “Travel light. Get rid of things,”² one observer said. There is in a sense “a time for all things,”³ and our perspective changes. We go through periods when things matter very much, when positions, honors, tangibles matter maybe too much. Then maturity moves in as our days diminish, and we begin to look at what we do with every hour, and at all pleasures and pursuits. We begin to look at the impediments⎯the things that clutter, the things that take our time, with an awareness that every possession takes time, as it must be kept and cared for. There are many kinds of slavery, and slavery to things is one kind. When we want too much, when we take too much, when we eat too much, when we overload our lives, we would well remember the words of Epictetus: that we cannot pull our hands out of a narrow-necked jar when we have too much in the; when we hold too much to more or less meaningless things simply for their own sakes.