“More More More,” Said the Baby

Staying Satisfied

THERE’S A PICTURE BOOK by the beloved children’s book author Vera B. Williams called “More More More,” Said the Baby. It features three young children of different ages and shows how we can never get enough or give enough love. After Little Guy’s father throws him into the air and catches him and kisses his belly button, Little Guy says, “More. More. More.” And after Little Pumpkin’s grandmother tastes each of her grandchild’s toes, Little Pumpkin laughs and says, “More. More. More.” And after Little Bird’s mother gives her a kiss on each of her sleepy eyes, all Little Bird can utter is, “Mmm. Mmmm. Mmmm,” as she falls asleep. In each pair, adult and child, the adult praises the child in word or song and holds the child close. It’s a book overflowing with love, as represented by the words and the pictures, which are painted in vibrant colors: blues and purples and oranges and magenta. And as with all the great children’s books—Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak or Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold—this book delights children but also has uncanny resonance for adults.

Almost daily, the phrase “ ‘More, more, more’ said the baby,” pops into my head—though it’s taken on a different meaning for me. That same quality in children that is so human and adorable becomes something of a horror in adults. In Vera B. Williams’s wonderful world, adults give love and get it back multiplied many times over in the happiness of the children in their lives. But not all babies stop behaving like babies. The world is filled with people for whom enough attention, enough celebrity, enough wealth, enough power, enough adulation, is never enough. “ ‘More, more, more’ said the baby.” And when that baby is an adult, it’s not at all cute.

When you read of global business leaders, with decades of achievement, being tripped up by an expense account run amok; or of politicians setting aside their principles to get an internship for a child or a sinecure for a spouse; or of beloved entertainers humiliating themselves on reality shows to stay in the limelight a few months more—then “ ‘More, more, more’ said the baby” is the phrase that comes to mind.

But the examples don’t need to be this extreme. There’s the boss who again and again just has to take credit for an idea that is 95 percent due to the inspiration of one of her team members and 5 percent improved by her own tweak of it. (Buddhist business book author Marshall Goldsmith is withering when he writes about this managerial flaw in his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.) Or the employee who dies a little every time a colleague is praised. Or the friend who “had a horrible morning,” solely because the person in front of him at Starbucks took a crazy long time to place her order.

This is not the justifiable rage of the dispossessed; this is the peevishness of those for whom enough is not enough.

Of course, it’s plenty easy to decry this tendency in others. It’s a little more painful and difficult to accept that the baby crying “More, more, more” is sometimes me.

I sometimes lie awake at night with alternating worries: Did I push too forcefully ahead at work, steamrolling someone else? Or did I let myself off the hook too easily, content to sit in the back when maybe I had something to say or add? And I expect that others might see my choices differently—charging me far more frequently with the crime of pushing too forcefully rather than neglecting to make myself heard.

The desire for more is certainly one of the things that moves mankind forward. Marie Curie didn’t say after her first Nobel Prize, “Gee, I guess I can call it a day.” In fact, she and her husband were so committed to their research that they didn’t even go to fetch the Nobel. She continued soldiering away in her labs, discovering radium and polonium, among other things, and earning herself a second Nobel—becoming the first person ever to win two of them.

And Steve Jobs certainly could have relaxed (with money and reputation to spare) long before launching the iPhone and changing forever the world and what we do with our hands all day.

So how do we distinguish between the kind of “More, more, more” that drives the world forward, and the kind that causes us to lose our way? And how do we know when it’s time to press on—to demand, to insist, to persevere—and when it’s time to ease up?

The answer is that we usually don’t. History has very few elegant exits.

The most famous example from classical times of a person who was happy to relinquish the stage is the dictator Cincinnatus. According to the Roman historian Livy, Cincinnatus spent a mere two weeks and two days as absolute ruler of the Roman Republic. This allowed him enough time to make the changes that he thought needed to be made to protect the city of Rome and its patrician/republican system. He then voluntarily relinquished his absolute authority and retired to the countryside. George Washington was a big fan of Cincinnatus. There was actually nothing in the United States Constitution during Washington’s time to keep him from continuing to run for office term after term after term; following the example of his idol, he voluntarily stepped aside after two.

But given that Cincinnatus was, at heart, a principled and honorable fellow, I find his example less startling than other, less celebrated ones. In Lives, Plutarch’s dual biographies of celebrated Greeks and Romans, the author (who was writing in first century Greece) chronicled a few. Perhaps his oddest and most extreme case of a person deciding to step away from the public stage is the later Roman dictator Sulla. He took part in one of the ancient world’s great civil wars and triumphed in it, marching an army into Rome to seize control in 82 BCE. He slaughtered his enemies and gave himself full powers as dictator. But then he used those powers to strengthen the constitutional government and stepped aside. Plutarch (as translated by Aubrey Stewart and George Long) wrote of him:

Sulla indeed trusted so far to his good fortune rather than to his acts, that, though he had put many persons to death, and had made so many innovations and changes in the state, he laid down the dictatorship, and allowed the people to have the full control of the consular elections, without going near them, and all the while walking about in the Forum, and exposing himself to any one who might choose to call him to account, just like a private person.

Having relinquished all power, Sulla was able to spend time with his wife, his actor-boyfriend, and a louche assortment of dancers and lute players. He also set about writing his memoirs. Sulla was not a widely beloved fellow during his lifetime. Or after. But what makes his retirement so dramatic was that his ambition was so epic. He was someone who sought ever more until one day he decided simply to stop. One of the mysteries that has endured is what made him do that; what made him decide that the time had come to go from being the most powerful person in his world to a regular citizen.

It’s far easier to give up something you never really wanted, as Cincinnatus did, than to relinquish something you’ve fought and campaigned for all your life. For me, Sulla may not be the more inspiring figure, but he’s the more relevant one.

And for me, Plutarch’s Lives will remain a book that helps me untangle the thorniest issues of our times: finding the line between more and enough.

But that’s not the only reason to read it. There is no better soap opera in the history of history or literature. All of the television serials of our times from Dallas and Dynasty, with their wealthy oil clans, to Empire (note the title), chronicling the lives of a ruling family in the music industry, to Game of Thrones, with its weird warring kingdoms—all of these are heirs to Plutarch’s Lives. You don’t know infighting and betrayal until you’ve read the way that Plutarch chronicles the shenanigans behind the warriors and politicians who ruled ancient Rome and Greece. Plutarch tells stories in pairs—alternating Greeks and Romans, and pausing periodically to sum up the main similarities and differences he is trying to highlight. He is interested in telling and showing his readers who was perfidious and who was brave, who behaved with honor and who carried on in the opposite way. For the most part, though, the people who behaved badly are vastly more entertaining to read about than the noble ones. Plutarch was at his best chronicling the worst.

There are some things of which you can never have too much or give too much—like love. That’s why I keep Vera B. Williams’s “More More More,” Said the Baby close at hand. But for most everything else, more can easily become too much. And that’s why I keep Plutarch’s Lives next to it.