Enough Is a Harvest Too

When we think about a harvest, we often envision baskets spilling over with apples. Pumpkins piled upon pumpkins. Tables hidden by loaves of bread, bowls of fruit, vegetables, flowers, wine. Abundance everywhere. More than anyone could possibly eat.

Somewhere along the way, harvest became synonymous with excess. Perhaps that makes sense. After all, there is something deeply comforting about plenty. Especially when we remember that for most of human history, a good harvest meant survival through the winter.

But a successful harvest wasn't necessarily the biggest harvest.

It was enough.

Enough food to eat. Enough to preserve. Enough grain stored away for the cold months ahead. Enough seed kept back to plant again in spring. Enough, perhaps, to share with a neighbor whose fields hadn't fared quite as well.

Enough was the measure.

I wonder when we stopped measuring our lives that way.

The Trouble With More

We live in a culture that is extraordinarily good at convincing us that whatever we have, wherever we are, whoever we have become—it could all be just a little bit more.

More money. More achievement. More followers. More square footage. More productivity. More experiences. More stamps in the passport. More things checked off the list. Even wellness can become another pursuit of more. More steps. More protein. More supplements. More sleep scores. More optimization. More years. 

Apparently, even living well can become exhausting.

But somehow, intuitively, I’ve always seemed to find my way back to enough even if I momentarily got caught up in more. I was never interested in more money, the next promotion, more credentials.

I remember one of my former bosses asking during a one-on-one, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” You know, that obligatory question that almost every boss who is looking for promotion seems to ask.

“Retired,” I said. Point blank. I could see that he was taken aback. He didn’t know how to respond because I had no interest in any of the bullshit that he was going to tell me about “more.” What I had already was more than enough.  

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with moving toward the next thing. Ambition carried me into a remarkable life. Curiosity took me places I never imagined I would go. Hard work gave me opportunities, experiences and security for which I am enormously grateful.

But eventually I began asking a different question: When is it enough?

Retirement brought that question into sharper focus.

Leaving a thirty-year career meant stepping away from a world where accomplishment was relatively easy to measure. There were positions and titles, projects and deadlines, performance reviews and paychecks. There was always evidence that I was doing something.

Then suddenly, there was space. And in that space, I began to understand something I had intellectually believed for years but hadn't always known how to live: A life does not have to keep getting bigger to become richer.

And this is a big deal for me because “scope” is my number one value per Suzy Welch’s Values Bridge. Scope means: “When I envision my ideal life, I’d be immersed in a world teeming with adventure, leaning, experiences, and even some chaos.”

Yet, sometimes the richest life is the one we finally have time to notice.

A quiet morning with coffee and my journal. Writing something simply because I want to write it. Sitting outside with Mark. Walking through the garden. Traveling slowly enough to talk with strangers. Reading a book in the middle of the afternoon without believing I should be doing something more productive. Meeting with my Wild and Well sisters for coffee and gossip.

None of these things look particularly impressive on a résumé.

They feel remarkably impressive IRL - in real life.

Recognizing Sufficiency

There is something radical about saying: I have enough. I do enough. I am living enough. I am enough. 

Maybe because we confuse enough with giving up.

We hear, This is enough, and imagine resignation. Settling. Complacency. A shrinking of possibility.

But that isn't what enough means to me.

Enough is sufficiency. It is standing in the field of your own life and recognizing that something has already grown here. There is food on the table. There are people we love. There is work that matters, whether anyone applauds it or not. There are books we haven't read yet, roads we haven't traveled, conversations still waiting to happen, mornings we haven't awakened to. 

There are ordinary Tuesdays.

What extraordinary things ordinary Tuesdays can be.

The great danger, I think, is that we can spend our healthiest years trying to acquire enough to someday begin living.

Someday, when there is enough money. The house is finished. When we lose the weight. When work slows down.

Someday, when we retire.

Someday, when everything is finally arranged exactly as we imagined it should be.

Except life has an inconvenient habit of happening while we're preparing for it.  I think this is part of what simplicity has been teaching me. Enough doesn't mean that I stop dreaming. I still have things I want to create. Places I want to see. Stories I want to write. Gardens I want to grow. Adventures I haven't even imagined yet. Enough doesn't ask me to surrender any of that.

It simply means my dreams no longer require me to be dissatisfied with today.

That may be one of the most liberating ideas I know.

I can want tomorrow and love today. I can grow without believing I am currently inadequate. I can plant another field without looking at the one already ripening and calling it insufficient. There is a tremendous difference between creating from desire and creating from deficiency. One says, Look what else might be possible. The other whispers, What you have is still not enough.

I know which voice I want guiding the next season of my life.

A Practice: The Enough List

Most of us have encountered the practice of keeping a gratitude list. Today, I'd like to suggest something slightly different.

Create an Enough List.

Find a quiet place. Make a cup of tea or coffee. Sit somewhere you won't be hurried for a few minutes.

Then finish these sentences:

I have enough...

I know enough...

I have done enough...

I am enough...

Today, I don't need more...

Don't rush through them. Notice what comes easily. More importantly, notice what doesn't. What happens inside you when you write, I have done enough? Does some little voice immediately begin presenting evidence to the contrary?

What about I am enough?

For many of us, the word enough can feel strangely uncomfortable. Almost rebellious. We have spent years being taught to improve ourselves, prove ourselves, optimize ourselves and accumulate evidence that we deserve our place in the world.

Sufficiency interrupts that entire conversation.

Enough says that perhaps you do not have to earn this particular moment.

Perhaps you are allowed to simply inhabit it.

Carry On

There will always be another field we could plant. Another accomplishment. Another possession. Another destination. Another version of ourselves we could chase.

And some of those fields are worth planting. Some dreams deserve our tending. Some distant horizons really are calling us forward.

But we don't have to turn every open piece of earth into another field.

Sometimes we can simply sit beside what we have already grown.

We can eat from it. Share it. Save a little seed for next year. And watch the late-summer sun fall across it.

Somewhere between scarcity and excess lives a beautiful little word.

Enough.

Not too little.

Not everything.

Enough.

And perhaps enough is its own kind of abundance.