The car that is enough

A man in Minya drives a car that is twelve years old. It starts every morning. It takes his children to school and his mother to the doctor. The air conditioning works, most days.

Every advert he sees has a view on this. The new model is quieter. It parks itself. His cousin bought one last year and mentions it often. By that measure his car will never be enough, because there is always a newer measure waiting.

That is the trouble with more. It does not run out. There is always a reason something bigger, newer or simply different would be an improvement, and none of those reasons are lies.

So enough cannot be calculated. No figure tells a person when to stop wanting. It is a decision, and it belongs to the one making it, not to the advert and not to the cousin.

If he decides the car is enough, then it is. Nothing about the engine changes. Something about him does.

What he gets back is not only money, though he keeps that too. It is the hours he would have spent comparing, and the evenings he would have spent wanting. A kind of stillness. Room to notice the drive itself: the road along the river, the children arguing in the back seat, the life going on while he is not busy improving it.