Enough Is Not Enough

When I lived in Philadelphia, from early 2012 to the fall of 2015, I woke up early. I woke up, drove to the 24-hour gym just off 21st and Ben Franklin Parkway, ran a few miles on the treadmill while it was still dark outside, then drove back to my house, just north of 29th and Girard, showered, got dressed and walked a mile to OCF Coffee House on 20th and Fairmount, across the street from Eastern State Penn, just in time for them to open at 6AM.

I sat at a table with a coffee and bagel and endeavored to read as much of the copy of the New York Times I’d purchased that morning, as well as a devotion, as well as journal, as well as work on whatever creative writing project I had at the moment, as well as write a poem if I felt the muse strike me so.

All that before I walked another mile back north toward work at 9AM.

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My relationship with ‘enough,’ I acknowledge, is a choice.

For example, I woke up at 4:24 this morning to read the Bible, journal and write, but I hesitate to say that’s early enough. I plan to run somewhere between four and six miles as soon as it’s light—probably five-thirty or so—but I won’t say that’s far enough. After that, I hope to write a few hundred words—maybe a thousand, if I’m lucky—but I won’t permit myself to say that’s a satisfactory amount of words.

Perhaps, I think, I can write my wife a little poem to tell her I love her. Tell her thank you for prioritizing date night. Tell her thank you for great sex. Tell her thank you for watering the apple trees, for forwarding me the sermon she listened to, for grocery shopping, for being patient with me when I didn’t want to process what I was feeling two days previous.

But even if I did write a poem, and even if it did contain all those thank you’s to her, I don’t think that would be enough.

◊♦◊

Why, I wonder, do I treat myself like I’m an infinitely renewable resource? Or why do I want to believe that about myself? Is that a narrative I find convenient? In my mind, is it not so much “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” but “I can do all things, and if I somehow struggle with what I do it’s only because there’s deficiencies and defects I need to weed out within myself?”

Perhaps that myth of not being or doing enough has roots in culture or family. I’m not sure. But it’s five-twenty-eight now, and I’m thinking about the run I want to go on, and I’m asking myself, “is this run something I want to do, or something I feel I need to do? Who am I if I don’t run? Who am I if I struggle? Who am I if I ask for help? If I confess exhaustion?”

Because I am, in fact, exhausted. I can’t outrun the expectations I have for myself. I can’t ever catch up to that greyhound ahead of me that is my false idea of who I should be: as a husband, as a writer, as a Christian, a brother, a homeowner, a friend, a citizen, a video editor, a gardener, a reader, a podcast listener—none of it, for me, will ever be enough.

Let the evidence show that I will continually judge myself as not enough.

So maybe it’s time to bring in another judge. Maybe it’s time to recuse myself, or to drop the courtroom metaphor entirely.

It’s five thirty-three now. I have a blanket wrapped around me because it’s cold in the house. And right now, in this moment, I am enough.

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