When Enough is Enough

47 Ways Forward - Strategies for Navigating the Next Four Years

True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer

now dead,

and I were at a party given by a billionaire

on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel

to know that our host only yesterday

may have made more money

than your novel ‘Catch-22’

has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

1

Fall, 1985. I’m in Sanford Meisner’s acting class at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City.

Studying with Sanford Meisner was akin to learning how to conduct from Leonard Bernstein, taking physics from Albert Einstein, or being taught how to cook by Julia Child.

He was in his late 70’s at the time. Because he had limited vision in only one eye, his classroom was illuminated with the brightest of lights. His low, raspy voice had to be amplified using a portable speaker because, as a long-time throat cancer survivor, he’d had a laryngectomy. When he spoke, it felt like a mash-up of what God and Yoda might sound like if they were teaching acting.

Simply put, Sanford Meisner was a genius, a giant. And I was just 23 year old Peter Hedges from West Des Moines, Iowa, who had gone to a drama school in the south where I tried to outwork everybody and where the harder I worked, the better everyone else seemed to get.

And now I was in New York City. My acting partner and I were in the middle of a Meisner repetition exercise. Designed to get his actors out of their heads and into the moment, the exercise was simple, something my Aunts Shirlee or Barbara could do. It felt like it was going well, when all of sudden, Mr. Meisner shouted …

“Stop, Peter, stop!”

Startled, I turned to my teacher, who looked horrified.

“What? Was I doing something wrong?” Most likely, I was trying too hard.

He stared at me, his thick lenses seemed to make his wise eyes even bigger.

After a pause, he said, “Peter, do you think you’re interesting?

Yes?” I said.

“You said that like a question. So I’m going to ask you again. But listen carefully.”

He always had my attention, but never more so.

“Peter, do you think you’re interesting? Do you think you’re enough?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I’m interesting. I think I’m enough.”

“You say that you are. But I don’t believe you believe it.”

Then something in him softened.

“But you are enough, Peter. Goddammit. You - are - enough.”

I remember clutching my shirt right where my heart is - and this next part, I didn’t realize but was later told – a primal sound erupted out of me. I dropped to my knees. And I just sobbed and sobbed.

Mr. Meisner eventually said: “Stop crying.”

“I can’t,” I said, between chest-heaves. “I can’t stop.”

“Then cry softer.”

I pulled myself together and we went on with class.

The next few weeks turned into a kind of blissful blur. For the first time in my life, I stopped trying so hard. I stopped doing too much. This brilliant man believed in me more than I ever had and I chose to believe him.

For that brief period of time, I felt the sublimity of being enough.

2

What is enough when we live in the Time of Too Much? Too much news, too much noise, too much to do. Too much stuff. Too much plastic and trash. Too many choices. Too much cruelty. Too much power in the hands of too few people. And too many people who have too much money and far too many who don’t have enough.

I type these words with my 62 year old white, cis, male, born in the USA hands. My hands are soft because I didn’t have to do the back breaking work of my ancestors. The backs of my hands have a growing constellation of brown spots – daily reminders that I’m not the young man I used to be and I’m older than my grandma was when I thought she was old.

I’m writing from the perch of privilege. I’ve had a blessed life, have way more than plenty and even still I have days when I struggle with enough. So much of my frequent self-inflicted suffering and occasional sadness comes from not enough-ness and the crave for more.

But this is not new. Or news. And I’m not alone.

The year I was born (1962) the great historian Daniel Boorstin wrote the following in the preface to his prophetic, must read book, THE IMAGE: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.

“When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before. We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless. We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy...to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.”

― Daniel Boorstin

It’s almost as if it’s never enough.

3

What about Trump, Musk, and those other inner circle billionaires who have so much?

What broken or undernourished part of them compels them to tear down laws, institutions and agencies that help the marginalized, the underserved, and the most in need - all in service of paying for their own tax breaks?

For them, when is enough enough?

And for the rest of us, too.

What’s it going to take for enough people to get sick and tired enough of what’s happening to say emphatically for the world to hear …

Enough is enough.

And there it is …

The next of the 47 Ways Forward:

#14 Know When Enough is Enough

4

We’re trending in the right direction.

The first rally I attended right after the inauguration was a small, anxious affair. The good people of Indivisible organized an impromptu gathering outside the office of Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirstin Gillibrand. My friend-mentor Ellen C. and I passed out flyers to passing pedestrians to get them to join us but nearly everyone refused the piece of hopeful paper we were offering. We were too much, too soon and I couldn’t help but think Uh-oh.

The next rally I attended was two weeks later outside Senator Schumer’s Brooklyn residence - a bigger crowd, for sure, more vocal, but at approximately 200 people, it was still on the small side.

Then came this past Saturday, in what could be called ‘a needle move.’ The numbers vary – but best estimates suggest there were around 1,400 rallies spread across every state of our country – and over 5 million fierce and fed-up people peacefully took to the streets or gathered in big city parks or in small town squares to demonstrate our growing, collective outrage.

Evidence that when enough is enough for enough people, the following becomes possible:

“The Tide is Turning” - watercolor / brush pen by P. Hedges 4/7/25 (inspired by a protest sign from the Newark, NJ “Hands Off” rally that was shown on R. Maddow.)

5

Next up. A day of nationwide protest will take place on Saturday, April 19th. Organized by the grass roots group 50501 [50 protests in 50 states, 1 Day], they are hoping to get 3.5 percent of the population - more than 11 million people — to participate. They cite this figure as the threshold for “sustained resistance in order to make a difference.”

Now that’s a way forward.

In fact, let’s make it the next of the 47 Ways …

#15 Engage in sustained resistance in order to make a difference.

On the 19th of April, all of us will have a chance to do our part. Click on this link for information to find the protest rally nearest you. Hope to see you out there!