Enough is enough

What a funny phrase: Enough is enough. It’s right up there with It is what it is.

How do you know when it’s enough?

How much exercise is enough? How much waiting? How much conversation? How much love, or pain, or joy is enough? Is there anything you cannot get enough of? Does enough change from one instance to the next? The amount of enough food to satisfy your hunger isn’t always the same. It depends on your hunger, I suppose. Sometimes you can wait longer than other times. Sometimes you want more love or joy. There are times when you reach your limit of pain sooner than other times.

Enough is a mere step shy of too much. Enough is fluid, situational, personal. But it’s always the same thing. You know it when you are there. You know when it’s enough.

What if you conducted your life, all aspects of it, limiting yourself and purposely avoiding enough? What would that look like? What if you avoided that precipice of too much? Is it possible to be satisfied, even happy, with this?

This. This that I have done, or said, or consumed, or thought, or felt.

Just this. I am content with this.

This week, consider the benefits of stopping well short of enough, far in advance of too much.

You might wish to read the ninth verse of the Tao Te Ching in this translation:

Holding and filling it

Are not as good as your stopping short.

Hammering and sharpening it

Can not be forever maintained.

When gold and jade fill a room,

There is no one who can protect it.

To have wealth and high rank, but with arrogance –

Then naturally their loss is your own fault.

When the task is successful, the self should let go of it.

This is the Way of heaven.