enough – FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

A few weeks ago, I shared my excitement about a longer run I’d done with a close friend, a runner and occasional running companion. Some context: as those of you who read my posts know, I’ve set myself the challenge of doing a 21k run once a month this year. This is a stretch, given I never ran that distance once last year and had foot surgery. It’s a challenge I think can complete. And each time I’ve set out so far this year, I’ve felt a frisson of fear. So, when I finish, I’m relieved, with a side dish of woohoo. When I shared, my friend said, with real frustration: “Every time I think I’ve done a good workout, I hear what you’ve done, and I feel like a loser.”

Crap. My first instinct was guilt. Am I a jerk? Why did I even need to say it? Did I offer the news in a showoff tone? Was my timing bad? Out for dinner on a Friday night. I am still thinking through how I might have said things better or whether I should have held off. I’m still examining my own motivations for sharing. Why do I even need to? (Even as I’m sharing my accomplishment here, too).

Sure, I know that the comparison isn’t mine to manage. Still, I don’t want to make my friend feel bad. Nor do I want to have the wind sucked out of my sails. The math her brain ran wasn’t her workout versus her goals. It was her workout versus mine. And she felt like she’d lost. And then I lost, too. Because comparison is a rigged game. Nobody wins.

This is happening all the time. Someone gets a promotion and we audit our own career, instead of truly celebrating their achievement. Someone posts a beautiful photo of themselves, and we scrutinize ourselves in the mirror, alert to everywhere the crow has stepped. The scoreboard is running 24/7 in the background, and we are behind.

I have those game announcer voices, telling me someone else has more. More success. More money. More love. More beauty. More … you name it. All of which can spiral me down the I’m not enough drain. So much noise.

When is anything enough?

I know. You know. We know. Enough is enough when we decide that it is so. We live in a maelstrom of enablers (hello social media), which inundate us with opportunities to compare and despair. The real accounting has to happen inside our own selves, or it will eat at us in perpetuity.

Our work is to find that tiny pause between the comparison and the collapse. My longtime mindfulness practice serves me here. When I give the voices space to rant and offer them gentle support. Plus, the slow accumulation of wisdom that comes from long years of repeatedly recognizing the fruitlessness of comparison.

There’s no finite supply of fitness, or success, or beauty, or achievement being divided up among us. My enough does not necessitate someone else’s not enough. Even if the voices inside our heads want us to believe that this life is a zero-sum game.

Oh, and also, when I told my youngest brother that I’d run my April 21k, he told me that he’d done seventeen (yes, 17) 21k runs already this year. Did I feel frustrated? Maybe the teeny, tiniest bit. Mostly, I thought, wow. He’s on a streak. Also, youngster!

On May 1st, I did my 21k for the month. I woke up with that pre-run anxiety. I arrived home on my doorstep with a thrill. A reminder of the joy that lives inside my body.

As the holidays and 2024 approach, I declared the start of my personal new year on October 28^th. The day after the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death, in a year of substantial loss—in addition to my mother there was the loss of my beloved 17-year-old cat, the loss of my 28-year marriage, the loss of my home and financial security and the (thankfully temporary) loss of my health. All of which I’ve written about here during the course of these last months.

I want to look forward. And, I’m struggling to feel like I’m enough, that my life is enough and, to put it bluntly, that I have enough resources. What does enough even mean? And how about this business of abundance? Abundance is one of the words of the moment. I feel inundated by invitations to reframe my thinking, to have an abundance mentality. Most days now, I fail to have an abundance mentality. Enough feels like a stretch goal.

Recently, I’ve been listening to Beautiful Chorus chants when I meditate. One of my current favourites is I Am Enough, which I often follow with their chant Abundance. After all, I’m not against abundance. I would like to have an abundance mentality. I just can’t seem to achieve it. I notice the chants feel different. My body yearns toward enough, as if my cells know that I’m enough and want me to know that I’m enough. And my body often resists the abundance chant, as if my cells don’t believe that abundance is possible, or that the whole notion of abundance is just a quick fix fad or worse abundance is greedy.

*Egg carton from Abundance Acres Farm with sunflowers from the farmer’s market, too. It turns out I’ve been buying abundant eggs.*

Or, are enough and abundance actually the same thing? Maybe if I could truly feel like I am enough, then I would have achieved that elusive abundance mentality. Are they both just different ways of expressing a feeling of wholeness? This is a philosophical cycle that could end up with me dancing on the head of a pin with the angels. My mother used to say that when my father would come back from synagogue with a story of an extended debate about, say, whether using a light switch was allowed on the sabbath. She’d say, “Now it’s just angels dancing on the head of a pin.” And, as I wrote this, I wondered, where did her saying come from, only to learn that it refers to tedious religious controversies from the middle ages.¹

Enough with the angels. Let me get concrete.

I’ve faced some health challenges lately. So, I’m even more acutely sensitive to my level of energy when I run, or really do any physical activity. Over the many months of slower and slower runs, as my energy depleted, I had re-calibrated my expectations. Just getting out was enough. At first, as the medication returned me to the energy level that I was accustomed to in the past, every drop of extra ease and speed in my body felt like abundance. Now, only a few weeks later, as I settle back into the new-old normal, I notice that feeling of abundance recalibrating back to enough. In other words, I see my mindset shift. As if abundance is an unstable state and enough is the stable state. Abundance is an overreach. I couldn’t possibly merit abundance and anyway it’s a fickle, fair-weather friend. I’m scared that if I relate to my energy as abundant (versus enough), then it will be taken away.

To which the universe offered me this: Feeling frisky on a recent run, I picked up my pace, only to ping my hamstring. Really? The universe can’t let me have a quick run? I need to be put in my place that fast? As if proving my point about the unreliability of abundance.

Sigh.

And then I noticed that right behind the frustration was another feeling. Oh the joy, to be running fast enough to ping my hamstring. There was a part of me reveling in the privilege of the ping. And I had a glimpse of the abundance mentality. Being alive and running strong is enough and abundant. The universe invited me to let the feeling fill me up. And then reminded me not to get attached.

Maybe that’s the difference between the two—I am enough, even if I don’t know it all the time. Everyone is enough. As they are. Right now. We can’t be attached to enough. We are. It is. Whereas abundance happens in the moments we notice that we are enough or that what life has delivered to us is enough. Noticing that causes our cup to run over. To know I am enough, or that what is is enough, is abundant. And it’s hard to feel so fulfilled and not get attached and want that feeling of enough-ness to last. That’s the slipperiness of abundance.

Or not. I may still be dancing with the angels.

Three examples:

I accept a 25% pay cut to continue doing work I love, that feels meaningful, because the company is in a tight spot until it finds more investors and/or earns more profits.
I get the news that my kidneys are functioning normally, after months of alarming blood tests.
I arrive at the Citibike stand, needing an e-assist bike, because the ride home is long and I’ve already danced for 2 hours. There are plenty of e-bikes docked at the stand, but all are red lighted and unavailable, except one, which also has enough charge for the distance I need to go. I cruise home in the autumn sunshine.

Enough or abundance?