Learning to Be Enough

How much is enough?

When I did Teach for America and my kids didn't fully get it, they used to tell me, "Ms. Somji, you're doin' too much." And yet, I never felt like I was doing enough. There was the constant lesson prep, the putting out fires, the learning how to teach, the grading, the decorating the classroom. I struggled to simply keep up, and, even before I could fully learn how to be a teacher in the American public school system, I quit. It was definitely the right decision as I was spiralling into a depression, but the feeling of never doing enough, and then, once I quit, of not being enough, wormed its way into my being, becoming a part of me. It felt like a failure to be a teacher, and a failure to quit.

Across time, jobs, and geographies, this feeling has persisted. Now, as a new, full-time writer, I sometimes feel like a child who is learning how to walk. And as I approach it with my ingrained not-enoughness, I know it’s holding me back from fully embracing the journey and the joy of taking my first few steps, wobbling, falling, getting back up, and starting again. There is an added pressure - I can’t simply just walk; I must also walk perfectly, despite never having taken a step before. It’s driven by society who sometimes romanticizes what it means to write (people often imagine staring off into nature, finding inspiration, and scribbling all of it down into some masterpiece), and the guilt I feel from being given the privilege of a lifetime and not maximizing it (whatever that means). There are days when I can barely eke out 200 words, and other days, like today, when I write over 1,500. There are some days when I don't write at all. And on all of those days, I feel like I'm not doing enough.

But now, here I sit at a cafe staring out over the still lake as a turtle bobs atop the water for a brief moment and then disappears underneath again. A light rain begins, and the water begins to shimmer, to flirt, to dance to the beat of each drop. A duck wades through the water, its presence marked by the path it carves on the lake, and then even that disappears, all trace of it extinguished.

Here, in this temporary respite, I rest for a moment, quieting the reproach in my head that tells me to do more, to be more. In this space, simply existing is enough; and, with that weight sloughing off me, I find I can write more, write freely, write in a way that allows me to access something greater.

I know I need a radical redefinition of what enough means. What will it take to feel like I’m enough? I barely reveled in the bravery of leaving behind a career and pursuing my dreams - it wasn’t enough to simply do that. And there is evidence for this that is tied to our own survival. Humans have, what scientists have termed, a hedonic treadmill - i.e. that we adapt quickly and enjoy or suffer from a new event for a brief interval before reverting back to the same satisfaction level that we were at before the event transpired. There are ways to change this set-point, but, in general, we end up acclimating to our circumstances rather quickly. And of course, we are always comparing ourselves to others in undesirable ways - when I read an excellent piece of writing, I often think to myself, I’ll never be able to write that well.

We are stuck in a cycle of never feeling like we are enough. We do something new or reach a new height, adapt to it, compare ourselves to others, and then reach for the next thing, in endless pursuit of trying to be more fulfilled, to be enough.

One way of overcoming this is gratitude, which I wrote about in a previous post. Another is deep introspection, real consideration of what we want in life, of when enough will be enough.

What if resting is enough? What if waking up in the day and taking your dog for a walk is enough? What if simply warming up leftovers to eat a meal while watching Netflix is enough?

What if I could believe adequacy isn't about how much I do, but something I carry within me? That by simply existing, I am enough.

Isn't this the law of nature after all? Even the trees aren’t doing all the time. Even they have seasons of growth and stillness. Even they rest, laying dormant in the winter, to gather their energy for the spring. I hardly think they feel guilty for it.

So here, for a moment, I will rest for a bit, take a beat. I will watch the duck arc its way across the lake, simply gliding across the water because it wants to. I will witness the turtle dip its head below the surface, sinking further and further until it disappears entirely. I will watch the lake transform from its tempestuousness dance with the rain to a reservoir of stillness.

And maybe, in this space, I, too, can learn to be enough.