What Does Enough Feel Like?

I have no idea what enough feels like.

I realized this recently, which seems rather late in life to discover you don’t understand such a basic word.

I know what not enough feels like.

Not enough time.

Not enough money.

Not enough energy.

Not enough accomplished.

Not enough done.

Not enough progress.

I also know what more feels like.

One more email.

One more project.

One more thing I should take care of before I sit down.

One more improvement.

One more goal.

One more thing that will supposedly make life easier once I finish it.

But enough?

Enough is strangely unfamiliar.

If you asked me how I know when I’ve done enough for the day, I wouldn’t know how to answer.

Usually I stop because I’m tired.

Or because it’s late.

Or because something else requires my attention.

I don’t often stop because I have looked at what I’ve done and thought:

That’s enough.

Apparently I have been waiting for a finish line that doesn’t exist.

There Is Always Something Else

This is one of the problems with being a functioning adult.

You are never actually finished.

You can finish doing the laundry.

Temporarily.

People insist on wearing clothes again.

You can clean the kitchen.

Someone will become hungry.

You can answer every email.

This only encourages people to send more.

You can finish a project and experience approximately eleven seconds of satisfaction before your brain helpfully reminds you of the next one.

There is always something.

Which means that if rest requires completion, we have created an impossible system.

There will always be a reason not to rest yet.

I lived this way for years without questioning it.

Rest came after.

After the work.

After the house.

After everyone else was taken care of.

After the problem was solved.

After I had accomplished enough to justify doing nothing.

The difficulty was that I had never established what enough actually was.

So the requirement could never be met.

Very efficient.

I Thought This Was Responsibility

For a long time, I considered my inability to stop a positive characteristic.

I was dependable.

Hardworking.

Productive.

I could handle things.

Give me a problem and I would deal with it.

Give me several problems at once and, strangely enough, I might become even calmer.

I didn’t understand that some of the qualities I was proudest of might also have been connected to the way I had learned to survive.

That realization has made me reconsider quite a few things I once filed under personality.

Because survival mode has a peculiar relationship with enough.

When your brain believes it needs to anticipate what might happen next, stopping doesn’t necessarily feel peaceful.

It can feel irresponsible.

There might be something you’ve forgotten.

Something you haven’t prepared for.

Something you should be doing.

Something coming.

You don’t necessarily think these things consciously.

Sometimes you simply feel restless when you sit down.

So you get back up.

There is always laundry.

I Became Very Good at Moving the Goalposts

This didn’t only happen with housework.

I did it with everything.

Finish something and immediately think about the next project.

Accomplish something and decide it wasn’t particularly impressive.

Receive a compliment and explain why it wasn’t really deserved.

Reach a goal and create another one.

Lose weight and think about how much was left.

Learn something and become aware of everything I still didn’t know.

Improve something and notice the next thing requiring improvement.

I was exceptionally skilled at preventing satisfaction from getting too comfortable.

I don’t think I consciously believed I wasn’t allowed to feel satisfied.

I simply didn’t stay there long enough to find out.

There was always another hill in the distance.

And I kept assuming that one would be the place where I finally arrived.

Enough Is Bad for Business

It probably doesn’t help that we live inside a culture with very little interest in teaching us how to recognize enough.

Enough is commercially inconvenient.

Imagine an advertisement saying:

You probably have everything you need. Carry on.

Terrible business model.

Instead, there is always an improvement available.

A better kitchen.

Better skin.

Better clothes.

Better productivity.

Better sleep.

Better health.

Better habits.

Better relationships.

A better morning routine.

A better version of yourself.

Even healing can become something we consume.

Another book.

Another course.

Another method.

Another explanation.

Another breakthrough we supposedly need before we can finally become the person we were meant to be.

I don’t think wanting things is the problem.

I like wanting things.

I want to travel.

I want to write more books.

I want to become healthier.

I want to learn things.

I want experiences I haven’t had yet.

Wanting is part of being alive.

But there is a difference I am only beginning to understand between wanting more and believing what I have is never enough.

Those two things can look remarkably similar from the outside.

They don’t feel the same on the inside.

What If Enough Isn’t a Number?

This is where I think I got confused.

I treated enough as though it were measurable.

If I accomplished enough things, I could rest.

If I earned enough money, I could relax.

If I lost enough weight, I could wear certain clothes.

If I healed enough, I could start living differently.

If I became productive enough, successful enough, disciplined enough, organized enough…

Then.

Except enough kept moving.

So maybe I’ve been using the wrong measurement.

Maybe enough isn’t a quantity.

Maybe it’s a moment when I decide not to immediately demand something else from myself.

That feels almost suspiciously simple.

I’m not sure I trust it yet.

I Have Started Experimenting

Lately I’ve been trying something that should not qualify as an experiment because it is embarrassingly basic.

When I finish something, I try to notice that I finished it.

That’s it.

No gratitude journal.

No thirty-day challenge.

No special breathing technique.

I finish something and resist immediately replacing it with the next thing.

Sometimes for thirty seconds.

I made dinner.

It’s done.

I wrote something.

It’s done.

I answered the email.

Done.

I cleaned the kitchen.

For the next seven minutes, depending on who enters it, it is done.

This feels strangely unnatural.

My brain wants to continue.

Good. Now what?

I’m trying to occasionally answer:

Nothing.

Not forever.

Not even for the rest of the day.

Just for a minute.

Nothing.

Rest Is Particularly Complicated

I used to think rest was what happened when you had earned it.

I am beginning to suspect this is why I was so bad at it.

If rest is a reward for finishing everything, rest becomes impossible.

Because everything is never finished.

Life isn’t designed that way.

There will always be dishes.

There will always be something unanswered.

There will always be another thing I could improve.

At some point, rest has to happen in the presence of unfinished things.

I dislike this information.

It means I cannot wait until everything is under control.

Apparently I am expected to sit down while knowing perfectly well there is laundry somewhere in the building.

This seems reckless.

I’m trying it anyway.

There Is Another Version of Enough I Don’t Trust

There is a danger in talking about enough.

It can become another pretty philosophy used to tell people they shouldn’t want better.

Be grateful.

Be content.

Appreciate what you have.

Sometimes that’s useful.

Sometimes it’s nonsense.

If you’re unsafe, you need change.

If you don’t have enough money to live, you need more money.

If a relationship is destroying you, contentment isn’t the answer.

If you’re miserable in circumstances you can change, wanting something different isn’t a moral failure.

Sometimes not enough is important information.

I don’t want to become so enamoured with the idea of contentment that I stop listening when dissatisfaction is trying to tell me something.

I think the distinction I’m trying to make is different.

There is this isn’t enough for me.

And there is I am never enough.

One can move us toward a better life.

The other can make every life feel inadequate.

I know which one I’ve carried more often.

Maybe Enough Can Be Very Small

I’m starting to notice moments when I don’t want anything else.

They don’t last long.

A cup of coffee that tastes particularly good.

Getting absorbed in a book.

Sitting somewhere beautiful.

Finishing something I enjoyed making.

Laughing hard enough that whatever I was worrying about temporarily disappears.

A meal when I’m hungry.

A conversation I don’t want to rush.

For those few moments, nothing is missing.

I don’t think:

This coffee would be better if I were more successful.

I don’t wonder whether I am sufficiently healed while laughing.

I’m simply there.

Then my brain returns with its clipboard.

But for a moment, there was enough.

Maybe that’s what I’ve misunderstood.

I thought enough would be a destination.

A point I would reach after accumulating the correct amount of security, accomplishment, healing and wisdom.

Perhaps enough is much smaller than that.

Maybe it arrives for a few seconds at a time.

And perhaps my job isn’t to hold onto it.

Maybe it’s simply to stop walking past it.

I Still Don’t Know What Enough Feels Like

I’m learning.

Slowly.

I know now that enough probably doesn’t mean everything is finished.

It doesn’t mean I stop wanting things.

It doesn’t mean I abandon ambition or decide everything in my life is perfect.

It doesn’t even mean I’m satisfied all the time.

That sounds unbearable in its own way.

Maybe enough is simply the ability to occasionally look at a moment, a day, a meal, an accomplishment or myself and not immediately ask it to become something more.

To let something be complete before I move on.

To sit down while there are still things to do.

To accept a compliment without arguing with it.

To enjoy progress without immediately measuring the distance still left.

To recognize that wanting tomorrow to be different doesn’t require finding today inadequate.

I have spent much of my life asking:

What’s next?

I’m not planning to stop.

There are too many things I still want to see and do and create.

But I’m adding another question.

Every once in a while, before I move on:

Was that enough?

And maybe, occasionally, allowing the answer to be yes.

Not forever.

Not everything.

Just this.

Just now.

Enough.