Enough.
A reflection on being enough and having enough, while the world waits and watches.
Like my students who don’t do their assignment and are too embarrassed to come to class, I’m here writing for the first time in months. I share this sense of shame that I haven’t written enough, posted enough, or done enough. It’s one of the classic tenants of imposter syndrome that paralyzes me (us) from doing more. I feel this more than ever today, on Election Day.
I had friends who took off work to phone bank, to travel to swing states to canvas, to get out the vote, and I fear - did I do enough? Have I done enough? Which brings me to today's reflection, on enough…
She is enough.
She is more than enough.
She is thrice, quadruple, quintuple, infinity, more than enough.
He, who continually puts her down as being less than enough, is the one with not enough empathy, not enough humility, not enough humanity.
He, who can only shame and blame her for not being enough, is the one who is not quiet enough, or slow enough, or patient enough.
He, who thinks she is less than enough, wants you to think that you are not enough.
He wants you to think, that in order for you to be enough, you need to buy enough gold shoes, and watches, and collector coins, and digital trading cards, and coffee table books, and steaks, and ties, and bibles...
But even then, you will not have enough, or be enough.
He is not alone. There’s an entire culture that sells this idea that you need more, must want more, get more, build more, buy more, faster more, order-to-be-at-our-door-in-2 hours-or-less-more…
But they are the ones who do not have enough, they do not have enough fulfillment, do not have enough enlightenment, do not have enough love.
And yet, so many individuals who work for them, do not actually have enough.
They do not have enough food. They do not have enough housing. They do not have enough health care.
There are so many trapped in that world, who think that the only way to get enough is to support those who keep selling the idea of enough, instead of supporting those who want to help lift you up to be enough.
How is it that this is happening?
That there are so few with so much,
convincing so many,
they will never have enough,
never be enough?
Acting as idols filled with continual greed, while depleting others in morale, depleting our resources by extracting them all to create empty goods to sell as false promises that they will one day be enough.
Why is this story still being told - that she is not enough?
That in order to be enough, we need to buy enough? Work enough? Dress up enough?
It doesn’t seem fair when my therapist says I need to be enough for myself, and I look up at her on the eve of history and half the voices say
she will never be enough.
I wonder, is she enough for her?
We sell t-shirts and sweatshirts reminding each other “you are enough.”
A stranger dropped a note in my garden telling me I was “absolutely enough”.
But will she be enough to save us all?
The reality is, we have enough. We have enough because we have it all.
But we only have it all, when we have it collectively, together.
Because there is no he and she. There is no us and them. There is only we.
We have enough, because we have 1 planet.
When it is gone, then, we will no longer have enough.
It’s not about having enough for me, or enough for you, but enough for all. Because we are all here. We are all part of the same system that makes the world go round.
Those who say she is not enough, that you are not enough, that want us to buy our way into having enough, also want us to believe we are d i v i d e d.
If we are divided there is an “other”
Whether the “other” is to be feared, or the “other” is to be idolized, there is an “other”.
When one is othered, another is not enough.
But we all must be enough, together. We all must belong.
She must be enough.
We must see her, and believe her, and trust her, as more than enough.
And if it is not enough, it must be our work, to belong together.
And if it is enough, it must be our work, to belong together.