Every time I make a wish, blow out a candle, throw a penny in a fountain or do a piece of work on myself, I ask for ease in my life. Ease was my word for 2025. It keeps coming back, a wave washing against the shore of my mind.
Ease is the memory of a moment emerging from sleep. A cat kneading my hair, purring. Sunlight. My partner next to me. A weekend day stretched out ahead of us. A run. Good food. Lying on the couch with a novel. Time with friends.
That life no longer exists.
Hear the grunting sound, as I push all my weight against a heavy load of unease, hoping to shove it aside and finally step into lightness. Straining toward ease.
When I saw the movie, The Odyssey, the line that stabbed me in the heart was Odysseus describing the Sirens’ song: It told you that what you most want is what you can’t have. And what you most can’t have is what you already had and lost.
The good food, the novel and the couch, the friends are not lost. They are still in my life. And the running, well, in this moment, the tendonitis that prevented me from running in August has cleared up. My runs the last couple of weeks have felt fluid and strong. Last week I did my first handstand since my shoulder injury in mid-May. After a period of injuries, my body is at ease. Not lost.
And some part of me is still not satisfied. I want them all. All the eases. All at once. I’d be at ease, if I could just have … What I already had and lost. My wish steers me toward the rocks.
Every day some source I read or hear tells me that whatever ails me can be cured by mindset. Sometimes I want to scream at them, that’s easy for you to say, you have (insert things I wish I had: a loving relationship, or financial security, or an important job), try being me!
So much self-pity in so few words. I am frustrated with myself. If only I could wave a mindset wand and wish my dis-ease away.
I’m tired. I’m in mourning. I’d like to believe that’s not self-pity. Not there yet.
As the holidays and 2024 approach, I declared the start of my personal new year on October 28th. 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.
