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MORE THAN ENOUGH
An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualist concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Things came to a head the day we moved into East Atlanta Village.
This neighborhood in Atlanta is a quickly developing area of the city, consisting of a mix of everything from tattoo artists to college students to African-American leaders who have lived in the community for fifty years. It has a community-operated bike shop and eclectic bars featuring the best up-and-coming young musicians, and the contrast of brand-new craftsman-style homes and homes that were hand-painted in the 1950s. It’s a wonderful, diverse place to live.
My wife and I, as we considered moving into the city of Atlanta, loved the vibe of being in the village. We also liked the idea that we would live close to great places to eat and hang out. We stepped up from a two-bedroom to a three-bedroom home with a great yard for our dog, Max. We knew this was going to be the place where we started a family. We believed that this would be the place where our lives would progress in ways we had not experienced previously.
We just didn’t expect what would happen next.
Some neighborhoods have welcoming committees. Others have the unofficial but genetically friendly neighbor who brings over cookies or a bottle of wine when she notices someone moving into the vacant house on the street. When we moved into our house, it was only a few hours before a man rang the doorbell.
This was our neighborhood welcoming committee of one.
He had one of those smiles that implied he had some hard stories to tell. His teeth were a little crooked, yet very white. He wore a Cincinnati Reds hat sitting cocked to one side. He was about forty-five years old and not afraid to talk to anyone. I quickly learned to recognize the particular way he rang the doorbell: much longer than the average person. My new neighbor’s name was Clarence, and as I learned that day, he was always “looking for work.” I also learned that Clarence worked hard. He focused on one project at a time much better than I ever could. He was a proud worker and enjoyed telling us about all the ways he made our neighborhood a better place, specifically by painting the neighbor’s house by himself. You can’t miss it: an electric blue house at the corner of my street. That house seems a perfect representation of Clarence: exposed and visible for all to see, because Clarence had no home.
Clarence belonged to a sociological category taught about in the issues-focused classes offered at my liberal-arts college. Clarence was one of the hundreds and thousands counted and written about in statistical articles I had read in newspapers, magazines, and online numerous times. Discussing ethics and studying statistics may spark an intellectual motivation to do the right thing, but meeting a person who was my literal neighbor took doing the right thing to a new level. It’s not that I’d never met a homeless person before. I’d served in soup kitchens, fixed up overnight shelters, the usual right things to do. But this was different. Clarence pushed me over the edge. He was my neighbor. I couldn’t get away from him. And I liked him. His constant smirk of a smile got under my skin and into my heart.
I enjoyed a complicated friendship with Clarence from the beginning. Our relationship introduced a barrage of new questions for my life: how do I love my neighbor when my neighbor has no front door or even walls? My previous worldview assumed my neighbor would live in the same context as me: in a home. I thought the fabric on our couch or our dinner choices might be different, but I never really imagined my neighbor without a refrigerator or a shower. Loving your neighbor is a great virtue in life, but this neighbor brought new complications to mine.
With one doorbell ring, all the ways I looked at my day-to-day life changed. Suddenly I began to see my life through Clarence’s eyes. What he saw looking through my front door was abundance. I have not one but two living areas that anyone can actually see from the front door. If I lived in New Orleans they would refer to my home as a shotgun house—a straight hallway from the front door to the back. I have air-conditioning for those hot days in Atlanta. I have a toilet and shower in each of my two bathrooms, and I even have a washer and dryer for my clothes. And speaking of clothes, my wife and I each have our own walk-in closet filled with them. I have a shed, and my shed is full of tools. My shed holds a bike that I can choose to ride if it is a nice day, and a lawn mower with an extra gallon of gas, just in case. I easily have more than enough. Clarence didn’t have to say a thing to me. Just having this new relationship in my life changed the way that I looked at the world.
My material excess and his material need made for a confusing symbiotic relationship. At the start, our relationship felt oppressively lopsided, as it was entirely dependent upon whether I granted his regular requests for money, work, or food. I decided to feed him or give him money for the work he did in our yard. It was always my decision. This raised a number of questions for me: is this how a relationship should be? Is it really all about me and what Clarence can do for me? What can I learn from him? What would I gain by knowing him? I didn’t really have the answers, but I didn’t give up. He kept ringing my doorbell, and I kept opening the door.
After many months of intense conversations on our front porch, during which I learned more about Clarence while laughing together and working together, I realized that our relationship had transitioned. Once he asked to use my phone, so I showed him my iPhone. “Your i-what?” he responded. He didn’t know how to use it, but after a quick lesson and placing his call, he told me I needed to get a real phone because the sound was too quiet.
As he left a voicemail, I overheard him say, “Now you have my number. Just call me back, and my friend Jeff will find me.” It was a strange moment for me as I realized that in that moment I became both his personal assistant and his friend.
Somehow we reached a new level of dignity in our relationship. He found in me a sense of community, as if I had a small glimpse of understanding into the life that he lived. We both knew there was no way that I could fully grasp what it would feel like not to have a physical place to sit down and process the day. But there was also an understanding that he could never fully understand the things that I have been given. Our worlds were far apart, yet we lived in the same square mile. We became friends, and our individual lives transitioned to a deeper collaboration and understanding.
Most of the things I learned from Clarence grew out of the extreme frustration rooted in our extreme differences. He didn’t see the world the same way I did, and it was tough. The selfish way that I see the world was always called into question when I was with Clarence. Every time I heard his long doorbell ring, it was like an alarm sounding his need. Without Clarence I wouldn’t think about how people on the street feel when it rains. Without Clarence I wouldn’t know that not all homeless people are looking for handouts. Without Clarence I wouldn’t think about how the changing seasons and temperatures influence the living conditions of the impoverished. Without Clarence I wouldn’t understand what it means to love my neighbor. Without Clarence I wouldn’t understand that I have more than enough.
I wish everyone had the opportunity to know someone like Clarence. When we become friends with people who have more or less than we do, like Clarence, it causes us to live differently.
It causes us to see more. It causes us to think about living with less.
At one level, this book is a way for me to share my journey of learning from people like Clarence and to introduce other friends walking a similar path. On this path, we’ve encountered people and places and situations that stop us in our tracks and cause us to rethink the way we live our lives. We’ve met people we have begun to love, places that desperately need the light of hope, and situations that beg for solutions. This journey forced us to make distinct and necessary changes in our own lives. Every story that you read is one that has caused me to change. I hope these stories do the same for you. Together we will ask questions, make hypotheses, and embark on some new experiments.
This is my story of change.
The reason I am writing is to share my experiences with you. To share with you a new understanding of what is enough in this life. I have more than enough, and I believe many people, possibly even you, have more than enough as well. Questions are the root of everything great I have done in life. The most creative ideas ever experienced are often conceptualized by asking simple questions. So that is where we need to start this journey: with a question.
I invite you to join me in a series of social experiments that challenge us to ask what is enough? in life. This question may begin to challenge the way you see the world today. That’s okay. When we choose to draw a line in every aspect of our lives, we choose what is enough. We are given the opportunity to define what is enough. There is great tension in walking this line of more or less, but this tension creates great opportunities. Living on less creates the potential to do much more for others.
May we be known by the problems we solve.
It all starts with one question that changes everything: what is enough?
Visual Moment
Watch the full story of Jeff and Clarence: