Have you had enough?

Have you had enough?

I have found myself reflecting recently on the topic which I am calling the ever-expanding realm of enoughness.
In the place where I live and work, someone left a bumper sticker that says; “How would you know if you had enough: money, love, time, food, recognition, etc...?” I reflect on this question often from my viewpoint in my work here in the Amazon.

Do you know anyone who feels a lack of satisfaction in their daily lives? How about the sense of not having enough time, or money, or love in their lives? Anyone who goes to bed feeling like they haven't gotten everything done, worrying about something that they will have to take care of in the future, or with a general sense of anxiety and foreboding about what is to come? There seems to be a cultural dis-ease in the West that prevents so many of us from feeling satisfied and content with what we have, and leaves us striving to have more. We live with stress and frustration under the belief that we do not have enough, have not done enough. How does that affirmation feel to you?

I often reflect on this in my daily life as I watch people arrive to the jungle and settle in at healing center. Almost all of us who come here are from the Western world, of middle class and higher and thus are used to having material and physical comforts at hand. Suddenly, we arrive to a place where there is no running water, or electricity, where there are insects everywhere and generally living conditions are quite simple.
Initially this can be quite a shock for some people upon arrival, but I am amazed to find how quickly people settle in and adjust to this environment, albeit for a temporary period of living here. The irony of this strikes me, as they are clearly living with much less of the comforts and technologies than they have access to in their daily lives, and yet it seems to be perfectly what they need in that moment, perhaps because it is simply all that is available.

This makes me believe that our needs and expectations for “comfort” and “well-being” are a sliding scale that can expand and contract tremendously depending on what we perceive to be available to us in the moment. Of course, if we live in a society where we are told that anything and everything is possible, then how do we determine when we have enough?

It is an interesting question that I will be considering myself in the next week or so, and I invite you to consider this question yourself, and if you like, share with me some of your reflections. I'm interested in hearing your experience of having “enough”.