When is Enough, Truly Enough?
What if we each knew what our enough is when it comes to food, friends, money, work, and every aspect of life? We learn in the iconic film Fight Club that “The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” Opportunities appear in our lives because we’ve made the space for them to emerge.
Everywhere we turn, someone has a product that claims to make our life better—whether it be the best car, the latest designer jeans, a new espresso machine, instant pot, air fryers or the best toothpaste. When a product or service stipulates that it can make our life so much better, the associated subliminal message is that our life is lacking without it. The global advertising revenue is at an all-time high, forecasted to reach $615 billion in 2020. The beauty industry alone is projected at close to $480 billion.
One aspect these figures address is that we worship our body and its appearance—not necessarily its health and wellness. Billions of dollars are spent on beauty products to pursue the perfect look set by the fashion industry and to imitate the beauty of celebrity icons, and now, even a growing industry of reality TV “stars.” It has made us addicted to the endless pursuit of perfecting how we look and completely overlooking how we feel inside.
Our spirit often gets left behind in the illusion of perfection as our ego drives our persona. And yet, in wanting to feel truly healthy, it is necessary to unite all the pieces of ourselves to feel whole. Mind, body, and spirit are all one package and it requires our daily attention and investment to all these individual parts, otherwise, we get lost in the wrappers.
Our Relationship with Stuff
There is a direct correlation to keeping society consuming unconsciously in a desire to need and want more stuff that makes organizations reach their growth targets. The successful business model is to ensure growth by achieving sales targets and creating healthy profit margins, but there is an even more serious downside to this formula than keeping our bank accounts drained.
Our psyche is being fed an underlying assumption that to feel good about ourselves, we need to have the latest, perfect items—whether it is the perfect house, perfect partner, perfect job, perfect car, perfect outfits, perfect friends, or the perfect vacation. What if the answer cannot be found in perfection? What if we each knew what our enough is when it comes to food, friends, money, work, and every aspect of life?
It feels like many of us have stuffed ourselves with more and more to make ourselves feel like we have arrived and are successful. Materialism comes from a place of scarcity and lack—a feeling of not being good enough or not having enough in an abundant and prosperous world of opportunity. Somewhere along the line, someone convinced us that more is better. But where we’re headed, all we’re being asked to consider is making conscious decisions about what we consume.
There is a growing movement urging humanity to be more mindful of the footprints we’re leaving behind and to minimize the negative impact our current lifestyles are making. There is an increasing number of people who are becoming aware of taking only what we need and refusing to define ourselves by our possessions. Exposing ourselves to a plethora of lifestyles and different views, we’re able to observe the differences and a growing divide in the world—not just in terms of gender, race, and class, but also to many other groups that society likes to assign labels to.
Making Space for Our Enough
Wherever and whatever we perceive to be a lack in the world, we are ready and willing to stand up for it and make a difference. Some are making different choices, which can be classified as conscious. This means we are actively making healthy choices, like not buying or working for organizations that make a profit from destroying the Earth and our bodies.
We are facing opportunities to keep the balance between our head and heart, separation and connection, ourselves and each other, and internal and external. When there’s too much of one without the balance of the other, our ability to take action gets clouded.
What if we face an opportunity to step out of muddy waters and gain clarity with creating balance and harmony? Letting go of past wrongs, wounds, regrets, and disappointments with forgiveness opens us up by revealing new paths of opportunity never considered before.
Many New Age gurus instruct us that we must move from the mind to the heart and that everything is the fault of our ego. But psychologist Carl Jung reminds us that “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Addressing our beliefs and finding harmony between our mind and heart is a trek that we are on right now when we focus on becoming whole within ourselves.
And then, being part of a collective conscious community and healthy society asks us to consider the effect on our planet and truly understand the role balance, harmony, wholeness, and integration play in our daily lives and the communities we bring together.