So much in life isn’t enough.
Love money kids talent success quiet peace safety power. Oh and happiness. Oh and enlightenment.
More please.
And of course there’s always the ME- that epitome of not enough-ness. Not kind enough, productive enough, lovable enough, successful enough. Perfect life? Not grateful enough.
And then there’s that old favorite, the just plain, “Not good enough.”
Amazing the number of people who lack in enough goodness. As if existence was too stupid to include more good while doling out those billions of lives. Yup, silly ol’ existence, just another not-good-enough screw up.
Even those things that seem like too much are actually just the flip side of not enough. Too many bills equals not enough money, too much quiet equals not enough adventure, too much success means not enough time smelling the flowers.
Yearn for more, then get it and it’s too much. Pine for a vacation with unstructured time and then be bored with all that downtime.
We yearn to feel good, to be happy, to be enlightened. Thought says that's all we need- to get what we yearn for. Then we’ll be happy. Surely more contentment will make us satisfied.
But what happens to feeling good as soon as that yearning for more, happens?
Buh-bye.
So whatever glimmers of contentment we do score are short lived. Because then we want to know how to keep it, forever. And how to get more.
Never enough enough for the mind. No matter how much there is.
We might have to get used to that.
Because the human mind is not able of grasping this enough thing.
We're always mildly discontent with this life, and if not, we're discontent with contentment.
Pretty wacky, huh.
So what can be done to fix this?
Nothing.
Nothing can be done about not enough contentment.
Because enough can’t come from striving. That just creates dissatisfaction with What Is, which in turn creates unhappiness, disheartening and depression.
When we think about it, trying to fix discontent and get happy is really a perfect task for the mind. Because it never reaches the finish line, trying to fix the unfixable.
Luckily we don’t have to stop wanting (as if we could.) And we can’t bully mind into acceptance.
All we can do is watch the game.
And yet that- paradoxically, nonsensically- might just bring the taste of awakeness we're yearning for.
Because somehow it changes things to see that all satisfaction is temporary, and that discontent is always going to be an ongoing part of the being-human game.
Paradoxically, it helps to see that contentment can only come from seeing that…
it’s never going to come.
Happiness can only come from being good with happiness never coming.
Now of course I realize that this zen koan-y-type stuff may at first seem to not make much sense. But that’s the beauty of paradox- it illustrates the limitations of mind trying to grasp itself. That's a pretty valuable tidbit in itself.
And of course I also know this is different from the, "You can do it! Get on out there and start to fixing!" stuff you've heard from so many others out there. But if those approaches haven't been working for you, could be there's a reason.
Luckily we don’t have to make sense of this, or find a way to be grateful or accepting or satisfied or happy- or any of that stuff we don't know how to do anyway and would have done a long time ago if only we did know how.
Rather than try so darn hard to get happier, maybe we can just expect discontentment, expect not-enough-ness, expect dissatisfaction.
And then watch what happens.
Imagine the peace that might be felt if we really could be free of the need to fix or have enough... anything.
That just might leave us here in the present, living with and accepting What Is.
Which is what we’re after anyway, isn’t it?
And that just might be…
Every once in a while and however briefly…
Enough.
