February 9, 2016

Before the day is out…I think I do better at free write when I am just waking up or before I wake up. The word that stuck with me all day was “enough”. Oh, and the companion word is “stuff”. If you stop to listen you will hear them everywhere.I look at my own life. I had enough of a job that I loved and then I had “enough.” I got myself fired so I would get paid for being fed-up. Looking for a job in Charlotte in the late seventies, I would up in Oklahoma City because the jobs for women around here did not pay “enough.” And then a long term relationship ended because “enough is enough”.What is and has always been “enough” is my home. And along came “stuff”. I could not do “enough” for this nest, and I gathered. I collected. I arranged. I searched for the things, the “stuff” that made me feel better. I went beyond “enough”. My sweetest love asked, “Do you have to possess something to appreciate it?” And it took me years to realize it wasn’t the “stuff” ever, I thought it was, but it was feeling I was “enough”, for her, for the world.The French have a saying something like, “In order to know where enough is we have to go too far”.So I started letting go. Small at first, then more and more as the space and simplicity became intoxicating. One bowl, one hat. One painting, one chair. And sometimes
 looking in the mirror and saying,
 “You are “enough”.
You have all the right “stuff”.