Now or Later

John got home Sunday night too late for supper. I walked into the kitchen to see him smearing peanut butter on a few crackers I had bought at a fancy food shop.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I just wanted a snack," he said.

“But I was saving those.”

“Oh, sorry. For what?”

“To eat,” I said.

“I AM eating them.”

“Later.” I turned my head toward a misshapen bowl on the counter. “When I serve them in this cute piece of pottery I bought.” 

He shoved a cracker in his mouth and walked out of the room. 

I knew it sounded silly even before I breathed the words. There were enough crackers to have now and later. Even if he ate them all, who cares? There are other crackers.

Anyone else do this? We tuck away the decorative napkins, the best-fitting bra, the good beer, and move the homemade pound cake to the back of the freezer because we have in our minds that this thing is too valuable to be enjoyed now. We must wait until the right time that never comes. The next thing we know, the pound cake has freezer burn, we can’t find the napkins, and the bra no longer fits. So we pop open the skunky beer and wonder what happened to our lives.

This is operating from a mindset of scarcity, when we fear restriction or lack. It goes much deeper than this, and I think we all experienced these feelings at the pump and the grocery store over the last year. But here I mean when we save something for later because we think either it’ll wear out or run out if we use it now. And, if that happens, there may not be any more. Real or imagined, it's not a great feeling. 

Do you save the good stuff for later? I don’t mean later for a specific event or purpose. I mean later as a vague and ambiguous non-time when you might need it.

This is not a problem in itself; we are told to not be wasteful and to plan ahead. We know grasping for immediate gratification can have us spending a paycheck before it’s cleared the bank. We know conservation is good: mindful use of water, gas, and electricity can help ensure valuable resources are around for future generations. We know that those who experience food insecurity have to apportion food and shuffle budgets out of necessity.

But those of us who (thankfully) have food in the fridge also know it’s not polite to hoard and hog. Yet we do. Sometimes with gasoline and sometimes with crackers.

Brené Brown says the opposite of scarcity isn’t abundance, it’s enough. 

What’s enough? 

Although you might be depriving yourself the pleasure of it (which I'm not for), saving a bottle of wine for a special occasion is harmless. Buying up all the toilet paper—ALL OF IT—isn’t. 

I’m not suggesting we can’t work hard and have nice things or that we shouldn’t prepare for the future. Definitely save for a rainy day, but don't forget to enjoy the fruits of your labor. What if we could thaw out the pound cake now and leave some paper towels on the store shelves for others? 

It might mean that what we have—or don’t have—is enough.

Thanks for reading.