How Full is Full Enough?
“All things in moderation,” Benjamin Franklin said. And Aristotle before him. And Jesus through the apostle Paul, way before either of them. “Let moderation be known.”
Plants need water, but too much causes fungus. And root rot. An overzealous gardener can drown a hardy hydrangea into the ground. Fire contained within a cauldron of rocks keeps us warm and emits a smell that chandlers scramble to duplicate and sell in stores. But fire, if uncontrolled, devastates and destroys, leaving behind the stubborn stench of all it has consumed. Too much ice cream will make your stomach hurt. Too much sun will harm your skin. Too much exercise will break down your body. Too much sleep can cause fatigue.
Retrieved from https://simplysidedishes.com/
But “too much” is hard to see coming. We mostly only know we’ve reached it after we’re already there.
My husband’s mom is an unbelievable cook. When he went away to college, she sent him with a Tupperware container full of his favorite Jell-O salad. And on weekends when he came home to visit, she made his favorite Jell-O salad. And every time she came to his baseball games in the spring, which was easily twice a week, she brought him Jell-O salad. Strawberry Jell-O simply swirled with whipped cream, some baby marshmallows, and thinly sliced pecans. The sight of it now makes his toes curl. And he starts sweating. It’s been 30 years.
“Too much” almost always comes from good intention. Smart people replicate what works. It’s how we get places—up ladders, down roads, through rocky patches. We organize ourselves toward the good and away from the bad, and that’s a pretty intelligent and healthy way to live. But good needs bad for evaluation, a thing to measure itself by. And too much of the same good gets pasty pretty fast. Like pasta that’s been cooked too long, it gets hard to see the initial appeal.
I have a friend (whom I love dearly, I might add) who leans on humor to help him find a place in social settings where he doesn’t quite know how to fit. Often his attempts at levity land awkwardly, but sometimes he nails a funny, and I just want him to drop the mic and walk away when he does. Except he doesn’t. Hardly ever. He cannot sense the saturation spot. The urge to try and carry it just a tiny bit further yanks at him. So he keeps talking, like a running back lurching desperately for another eighth of a yard. And you can feel the bad thing coming. The humor that was once so perfectly timed and delivered gets swallowed up by the extra effort of trying to drag it on.
I used to love coaching clinics. I loved the collective passion and curiosity that driven competitors brought to the room. I loved getting in the weeds and unpacking the tiniest wheres, whens, and hows. It was my happiest of happy places. For about a day and a half. And then it all became too much. I had to be really careful, or I’d unwind all I learned.
There comes a point at which the layering on of a really good thing can turn into a siphon that sucks out our favorite parts. We love our extended families and yet I can think of almost no one who would like to be cooped up all together in the same home for a couple of weeks. Too much of even that which we love can be hazardous for our health.
The hard part is sensing the fill line. It’s moving all the time.
P.S. Fire by Judy Brown