ENOUGH: What If I Don’t Need More?

One of the biggest lessons I learned hiking the Camino de Santiago was that having more than I need can become a liability.

On the Camino, the difference between just enough and just in case was measured in ounces. And those ounces had to be carried over mountains, through rain, and across hundreds of miles.

Eventually, you begin looking at everything differently.

Do I really need this?

And I wasn’t just carrying gear on my back. The weight in my mind and heart bore their own costs.

There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from realizing you can put something down.

The Habit of More

When I left my first duty station in California in 1997 and drove across the country to North Carolina, everything I owned fit into my little green pickup truck.

I remember how freeing that felt. My entire life could move with me.

Accumulation happens just as easily.

Stuff. Goals. Projects. Commitments. Improvements. Things we want to learn, places we want to visit, versions of ourselves we intend to become.

More sneaks in wearing all sorts of respectable disguises.

And somewhere in all that striving is a question we rarely stop long enough to ask:

When exactly do we arrive?

Enough Is Not Settling

During my career, I had the opportunity to live in Norway, where I encountered a very different relationship with enough.

American culture tends to celebrate more: more money, more achievement, more productivity, more experiences, more possessions, more followers, more wellness, more improvement. Even spirituality can become another acquisition project.

There is always something else we could buy, achieve, optimize, upgrade, replace, or become.

But autumn offers another way of thinking.

The harvest contains an ancient question:

Do we have enough?

The other day, while cleaning up the yard, I overturned a flowerpot and discovered a squirrel’s hoard of acorns hidden underneath it. They spilled everywhere.

I felt terrible.

Some industrious little squirrel had apparently been dropping those acorns, one by one, through the drainage hole in the bottom of the pot. And in one careless moment, I had dismantled the pantry.

So I carefully raked around the pile and left it alone.

That little stash has stayed with me.

The squirrel isn’t gathering acorns for the next twenty years. He isn’t building an acorn empire. He isn’t comparing his stash with the squirrel three yards over.

He is preparing for winter.

And somewhere in that tiny act of trust is a lesson I need.

Gather what you need for this season.

Trust that another season will come.

Enoughness is not resignation. It doesn't mean I don't want anything else, dream about anything else, or reach toward what comes next.

It means I can recognize what is already here.

And increasingly, I appreciate the versatility, lightness, and agility that having less brings into my life.

That doesn't mean I'm immune to accumulation.

Case in point: houseplants.

I have propagated so many plants that nearly every available surface near every window has become occupied. At some point, abundance quietly crossed over into crowding.

So I've been repotting them and putting them up for sale on Facebook Marketplace.

Apparently even abundance occasionally needs pruning.

(And if you need a houseplant, you know who to call.)

Simplicity Living Practice: Find One Enough

Don't inventory your entire life this week. That's just another project.

Choose one thing and decide that, for now, it is enough.

My home is enough.

I did enough today.

I have enough clothes.

This meal is enough.

I am giving enough to this.

Then leave it alone.

Don't immediately add a qualifier. Don't make a plan to improve it. Don't follow enough with but...

Just notice what happens when you stop negotiating with it.

Does your body relax?

Does your mind immediately begin arguing?

Do you feel relief? Resistance? Gratitude? Fear?

You don't need to fix any of that either. Just notice.

For one day, let one corner of your life be complete.

Perhaps that is the deeper practice of enoughness: learning that we can still dream, create, grow, and desire without treating the present moment as insufficient.

Sage Wisdom

Enough isn't the end of desire.

It's the end of believing more will finally make you whole.