Enoughness

....just exactly enough

My word for November was “enough.”

When we pay (enough) attention to something it can show up in unexpected ways.

Early in November I spent a day in London with “an inspiration of authors.” During a speed networking session, I met Becky Hall who wrote ‘The Art of Enough.’

I turned 52 during November and that number has a sense of enoughness to it. There are 52 weeks in a year and 52 cards in a deck. The town I grew up in had 52 licensed premises; one for each week of the year - is that enough?!

And there are 52 essays in David Whyte’s Consolations and in Consolations II. In November I read Rich. And to my delight it was as much about enough as it was about riches. He writes about an old Zen practice ‘just exactly enough’ that, he says, when asked as a question becomes ‘a reward in itself.’

Just exactly enough?

So how much is ‘just exactly enough?’ Or is it ‘just exactly enough’ of what? Of money? Of love? Of time? Of wealth? Of daylight or sunlight? Of food? Of music? Of friends? Of magpies on a roof for a cat to jump up and attempt to chase them? Of education? Of clients? Of offerings? Of poems? Of work? Of hassle? Of words? Of rain? Of exercise? Of endings and beginnings?

Of me?

How much me is enough me?
How much me do I need to be to be enough me?

When is enough, enough?

In a lifetime of living the questions can we ever ask enough questions?

If we looked through the world with the lens of enoughness would our world view change? We think about those who have, in our eyes, too much or more than enough. And of course, there are those we see with too little or maybe not enough?

While journaling I surprised myself with the line ‘if I’d recognised earlier I had enough and one month wasn’t going to make a difference in the greater scheme of things, then I’d have saved myself from all that grief and hassle.’ And later in that same paragraph I wrote: ‘I’d more than enough.’ That was about money. But on reflection, I’d also done enough, given enough and had enough. And my colleagues had probably had enough of me.

Endings and beginnings are about enough. We often end things when we’ve had enough of it and this makes way for something new. What if in that new beginning we imagined what enough might be or ‘just exactly enough’ so that we know when it is time to end, to let go, to leave, to stop, to save ourselves, to remain ourselves?

And what about the things we might not think to have enough of? Like love, laughter, joy, wonder, lightness and fun? Can we ever have enough of these?

Or maybe the better question to sit with is: is there ever a possibility that we’ll have more than enough of them in our lives? If we at least experience these as often as we possibly can maybe that is ‘just exactly enough?’