Perceiving Sufficiency: how do you see "enough"?

This week I read a really interesting article about a trick that modern life seems to play on our neurology. (No links, it was in a physical publication. I probably should have brought it up at Physics Chat Club but the topic didn't arise. )

There is something called a "reward loop" in the brain, where you identify something you want, get the thing you want with some effort, and then are rewarded by a big burst of endorphins once you've gotten it. Ordinarily, in other mammals as well as humans, this process is very straightforward and simple. You're hungry, you see food, you get the food, you feel good, that feeling fades, you get hungry again, see food, and the process starts all over again.

However, in conditions of superabundance, where an animal is presented with too many different food dishes, or where a human is in the grocery store looking at a hundred different brands of cheese, the reward loop gets messed up. Instead of simply identifying a target-object and getting it and feeling good, the brain keeps identifying more and more targets without ever providing its jolt of endorphins that tells it "you've got enough."

This process seems to be everywhere in modern culture. We have so many possibilities that we never quite have "enough." And we--at least, I--become miserable when that sense of "enough-ness" never comes. Ironically, superabundance leads to a chronic feeling of deprivation!

So I will work on perceiving "enoughness" in my life, and I will find that I do have enough. It is enough. And then some.