24 September 2026

Just Enough

Giving what is due

Two months ago, I read a tweet that’s stained my mind:

"The father of seven has not finished a thought in four years. he is just moving. feeding. driving. wiping. his brain is soup and his back is finished and he has no opinions about civilization he is too tired for opinions. and meanwhile civilization is growing out of him like he is dirt and he doesnt even notice because there is milk on the floor again. the childfree man has read eleven books this year about the decline of the west and he is the decline and the books are the evidence and he will understand this at fifty eight in a room that is very clean and very quiet"

The tweet is polemic, yet it gets at something real.

Modern culture is obsessed with the self. Self-improvement, self-care, self-discovery, self-help, self-esteem, self-empowerment, personalization, customization, me-me-me. Forget Elf on the Shelf, it’s elf on the self! Without obligations to others, self-directed activities can drag us toward a pool of perpetual navel-gazing. This tweet left a residue because of my own experience with self-obsession. Its criticism of the man reading eleven books in his tidy and quiet house hits close to home.

But Father Dirt isn’t the answer. A father who destroys his health may leave his children without him. One who never reads, reflects, or cultivates an inner life may lack the interior stability to offer his children, passing his own disorder onto the next generation.

Neither Father Dirt nor Mister Thinker are the right archetypes to emulate. Yet “be balanced” isn’t a clear resolution either. This framing articulates a quandary I’ve been trying to understand for years. I tried to define my own value system by first starting with words I associated with goodness—kindness, strength, and discipline. Over the years, I realized that values didn’t carry enough weight, and what I was searching for was virtue, the embodiment of values. One that stood out was the cardinal virtue of justice.

Maybe it’s because the word resembles my name. They say people named Dennis are more likely to become dentists (citation needed). Despite being named Justin, I didn’t feel very just. I’m a goal-oriented person (I’m an Aries, after all) and sometimes get disgusted with how much I think about myself and my ambitions. Justice challenged me to question that.

On the surface, justice is simple: giving each their due. If you owe someone money, pay them the agreed upon amount at the agreed upon time. If you say you’ll do something, do it. Josef Pieper defines justice as what we owe individuals, what society owes individuals, and what individuals owe the social whole. The latter two concern politics and the justice system, where things become considerably more complex. But complexity is not an excuse to wait for perfect understanding before acting.

The best place to start is with the people nearest us. The Screwtape Letters is an epistolary novel about an elder demon mentoring a younger demon on how to corrupt a young man’s soul. In it, C.S. Lewis expresses a powerful idea:

"The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train."

The Internet makes it easy to experience empathy for people across the globe. We hear about suffering in a foreign nation or acts of violence across our own country and feel a pang of humanity. Yet, when I experience a passive benevolence for these distant people, I don’t act on it. I hear about a bombing in the Middle East and wish those people well while ignoring the people begging under the viaduct and neglect to return calls to my friends. How is that justice?

The muscles that grow are the ones we train. Therefore, I imagine justice as a series of concentric circles. Closest are the people under our own roof. What does my wife need? What will our children need? Am I giving them what they are due in terms of financial security, material needs, and emotional availability?

Beyond them are family and friends. Am I calling my parents? Showing up for birthdays and funerals? Beyond them are neighbors, coworkers, and my communities. Am I reliable? Am I showing up on time? Is my say-do ratio positive?

Beyond those relationships is the civic whole. Am I paying my taxes? Am I paying my debts? Sebastian Junger, a journalist who, after nearly dying of a ruptured artery in 2020, has become an advocate for blood donation, jury duty, and voting as three minimum civic duties people should perform for the public good. After hearing this in 2021, I was inspired to fill a Franzia bag with my blood. On Tuesday, I filled that obligation for the ninth time.

We need not achieve perfection in one circle to proceed to the next. We can help distant strangers while being imperfect spouses and neighbors. But distant concern cannot become an excuse for neglecting our concrete obligations at hand. Mister Thinker understands the plight of the world, yet his hands remain uncalloused.

Each day, I learn more about what it means to live justly, and each day I fail to live it. But I can strive to meet the floor of justice by giving each concentric circle what’s due. Father Dirt may be admirable, but sacrifice cannot tell us when he’s given enough. That requires prudence: rightly seeing the world for what it is so we can make decisions grounded in truth. Justice says to give each their due. Prudence helps determine what is due. Without prudence, we can mistake indulgence for self-care or self-erasure for sacrifice.

Seen this way, the self belongs in the innermost circle too. Without our health, we can’t serve the successive circles. Getting sufficient sleep, eating well, exercising, reading, preventive doctor visits, keeping a tidy home—all these things provide a base for justice. The airline industry said it best: Put on your own mask before helping others. Not put on your mask, optimize your breathing, journal about it, and develop a fitness protocol. Put it on, then help your child, then your neighbor. The self isn’t the center because it is most important. It is the center because it is the point from which we act. But we are not owed care because we are useful to others. We are worth caring for in our own right. I know it is true, and I want to believe it, but I’m not quite there yet.

Being just enough is a hard project. As of this writing, I don’t know the names or positions on my local ballot. I’ve missed calls from friends. I haven’t unloaded the dishwasher like I said I would. And I’m late for bed, again. Yet here I am, writing another thought-piece.

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