Enoughness

What is enough?  “A little bit more” as the infamous billionaire said right?  Why?  Why is that the answer we accept in western society today?  Why is that the life I have lived for myself these past many years?  Work harder, push harder, buy more, have more, maintain more, sell stuff, sell myself, try something else.  Try someone else.  Try a different version of yourself.  Put this food in.  Take that drink and then another.  Smoke this.  Take that.  Shit and piss it out.  Run this many miles.  Then do more.  Climb that route then do one harder.  Kick yourself when you aren’t as good as you used to be.  Hike all those trails then do them faster.  Carry more weight.  Carry as much as you can until your joints start failing.  Never enough.  Break bones and and tear ligaments and then get back up and do whatever it was again.  Aways a little more.

Is it possible that it all stems  from our inability to be truly present?  Present and truly grateful?  Satisfied?  The myth of “if we can just get to that point over there then…” is so insanely pervasive and honestly insane.  Sure, perhaps, on the one hand it’s driven the greatest gains humanity has made.  But are not all those same gains undoing us at the very same time and further separating us from the planet that sustains our life in the first place?

I sit in my office surrounded by stuff.  Stuff that helps me do my job well.  Stuff that helps me have fun find adventure and to some extent enjoy life.  Stuff that makes me feel like, well, me.  But it really isn’t me and it actually has very little to do with who I really am.  I used to have a friend who said “whoever dies with the most toys wins”.  But really whoever dies with the most toys just dies and leaves a huge mess for someone else to clean up.  And for my part at least I think of the time I have given to the pursuit of more.  And I wonder how much of who I really am and how much of what life really is I have missed through the haze of my own creation.  I wonder what real “enoughness” looks like.