Learned Lesson Number Twenty-Five: Enough is as Good as a Feast

This blog is not about holidays, or pilgrims, or turkey dinner. Although Thanksgiving does tend to spawn ruminations on gratitude for me, and I kind of believe one’s level of gratitude determines their definition of what “enough” means. So maybe that’s the answer to the big question and I don’t need to go any further. Be grateful for what you have, and it will be enough, yes? Well, yes, if you can master that practice. And I already wrote that blog. But lately I have had some experiences that have caused me to  ponder the concept of “enough” a little more deeply, and this title phrase has come bubbling up from my memories of the countless times “Mary Poppins” played on our VCR when my kids were small. It was her answer to kids who wanted more, when she had determined they already had enough. So how much is enough? How much time, how much sleep? How much food, how much money? How much fun, how much love? Is it possible to have enough and still feel empty? Well, yeah. It is. But we’ll get to that.

Let’s address the question of time. We all have 24 hours in a day. I am not the first person ever to say that. We have all been told that everyone has the same amount of time, and that it’s just about how we spend it. I saw a movie recently called “In Time” where everyone stopped aging at 25, but was then given a ration of just one years’ time thereafter. There was a meter on their arm that measured their time, and they could trade it for other necessities, gamble it, give it to loved ones, or, if they had the means, buy more. But when it ran out, you were done. Boom. Dead on the ground. No chance to borrow a few more minutes to sort things out. No debt in that scenario. Broke is broke, and dead is dead.

The main character in this film liked to run things close to empty. (A quality he and I sort of share, but which I am trying to change.) He was a gambler who was unexpectedly given a surplus of time by a man who had far too much of it and was tired of living. He was then accused of killing the man to steal his time, and I don’t think I have to tell you that lessons in “just how green another person’s grass really is” ensued. So at which point in the story did this man have enough time? At every point, as long as he was not dead? Or at no point, because he was continually being pursued by those who wanted to steal his time?

I found this concept intriguing because I am not so good at managing time. (Or money, which operates on very similar principles.) I never have been. So the idea that running out of time could carry an instant death sentence was a little frightening to me. My current reality consists of trying desperately to meet online homework deadlines, about 5 nights a week, in pursuit of an elusive college degree, while also working a full-time job, and playing the Mom and Grandma Roles. Usually I finish within minutes of the deadline and don’t always beat it. No matter how well I try to plan, I always feel like I don’t have enough time.

The past 7 years have felt particularly chaotic and frightening because I have been trying to achieve “enough” in so many different areas, and am continually feeling like I am falling short. No matter how surrounded I am by friends and family who love me, I feel like it’s not enough because I don’t have a partner.  No matter how many healthy strides I try to make, I feel like it’s not enough because I am too old/tired/whatever to change. No matter this, not enough that, and so on. We may all have the same number of hours in a day, but some of us have more persistent forces attempting to steal our precious hours away.  Or at least it feels that way. And since time is the framework within which we try to get “enough” out of life, and money is the means whereby we acquire most of what we need, it sort of follows that if we want to have enough of everything else in life, we first have to acquire enough time and money. But how much is that? Is there a magic number?

I was incredibly blessed earlier this year to have received an inheritance from my grandmother. It was a big number. A big enough number that I thought it could change my life permanently if I handled it properly. Surely with that much money, I could create a lasting foundation on which to build, and never again feel like I didn't have enough. Well, as carefully and prayerfully as I approached my choices concerning these funds, they went quickly. On good things, of course, but I found it to be true that needs will rise to meet income. My needs and those of my children and grandchildren were met during a time they would not have been otherwise. Yet I went through this period of beating myself up because there were so many other things I had wanted to do with the money that I was not able to. My perspective on what constituted “enough” changed drastically through this experience. My levels of gratitude and appreciation for my Depression-era grandparents and their years of self-sustained provident living have increased exponentially. They took a garden and a house built with their own hands, and turned it into a fortune for their posterity. A certain story about loaves and fishes comes to mind.

So if there is an answer to the question of how much is enough, this is mine; Whether I am paying cash for a reliable car, or shaking change out of a piggy bank to put enough gas in the tank of that car to get to work on payday, it is enough. Keeping balance between feast and famine is an ongoing challenge. On every level.  So when my parents, children, and grandchildren are all in the same room with me, or when my ex-husband’s family invites me to Thanksgiving dinner and continues to embrace me as one of their own, it is enough. And it is also a feast. (No matter how much or how little I eat.)

Real life is similar to the movie, in that none of us knows when our time meter is going to run out, but as long as we still have any time at all on the clock, it has to be enough. We have to decide that what we have is enough, and that enough is good enough to feast upon. Although I think it might not be that bad to stop aging at 25.

Learned Lesson Number Twenty-Four: When It Comes To Love, Sometimes a Half-Empty Glass Is OK

I have a tendency toward depression this time of year. From January, February, and sometimes even into March, my glass feels like it is half empty. And draining quickly. I can’t really explain it. I can’t blame it on the weather either, because I live where the sun shines incessantly during these months, and the temperature averages about 65. Yet I have trouble getting moving, and I have trouble getting happy. The most basic chores exhaust me. Taking a shower feels like training for a marathon, and cooking? Forget about it. I am a frequent flyer at the fast food drive-through. If I am enrolled in classes, (and I usually am) they suffer. Everything suffers. The intensity of this condition has increased since I got divorced, and not because I wish I was still married. I do not wish that. Ever. But I feel homesick. For where, who, or what, I can’t always determine. I do know that it has to do with what is missing from my life. It is a specific emptiness. It is not ingratitude or self-pity. It is just this painful thing that I have to acknowledge and attempt to maneuver around. Usually, I can. Eventually. But it is a cycle that repeats.

Today is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is kind of like the “hump day” (…and NO, that is NOT what I mean…) of this cycle. As in, the middle, the top of the hill, the most exhausting part. The “Wednesday”. I think I am not alone when I say that for most of us, this day is difficult to ignore, no matter what you tell yourself about its meaning, or lack thereof. When you are a kid, no matter how many colorful, candy-filled valentines are stuffed into that decorated shoebox, if you didn’t get one from that One Cute Boy, all the candy hearts in the world just could not make up for that. And when you are a bigger kid, no matter how many expressions of love you receive from Friends and Family, if you don’t get what you need from that One Cute Boy, everything else pales. The difference (hopefully) is that when you are older, you at least feel guilty for not being appreciative enough of everyone else. But the bottom line is that we all long for a partner. A companion who is forever, who loves us deeply and beyond doubt. And until we have that, the emptiness will remain.

Having said that, I am beginning to learn, (in my advanced age) that emptiness does not have to be a terrible thing. Emptiness can be an opportunity. While my hopes continue to spring eternal, (that God will eventually bring the Cute Boy to me) I know that His timetable is not my timetable, and I can choose to stay sad in the meantime, or I can get creative about filling the emptiness in other ways. And since the emptiness is about love that is missing, the only way to fill it is to identify the other things that I love. And allow myself to have them.

One of the things I have recently discovered about myself is that I am very, very good at self-deprivation when it comes to the things I REALLY love. But I am learning to excavate those things, polish them up, and assign them the proper value in my life. Of the two big things that I have loved the longest, writing is one, and music is the other. I have always written, (in fact, I can’t stop myself from doing it) but only recently have I really started putting it out there where other people can see it. Not everyone loves it, and that hurts sometimes, but it’s ok. The process fills some of that emptiness, and helps me deal with it; put it in perspective.

And then there is music. I am a singer. I really love to sing. All the time. For anyone who will listen, for no one but myself when I am driving alone in my car, or for a huge arena full of people, should fate ever deal me that particular gift. But it really doesn’t matter where, or for whom I sing. It is the thing I love to do more than anything else in the world. Music, even more so than writing, is the one thing in my life I have never doubted that I love. Yet I do not allow myself enough of it, because I think I am being selfish to do so. I’m too old, it’s too late, and it’s an unrealistic pipe dream, whatever. I am learning to dismiss such negative self-talk, and just do it because I love it. I have also discovered that the pain and regret I have felt in varying levels through the years over my supposedly “lost” musical dreams makes me uniquely qualified to support my children in the pursuit of their own musical and artistic dreams. Which I find incredibly satisfying. It is another of the big things that I really love.

I was talking to a friend the other day, about being fifty (which we both are). She reminded me that if we make it to a hundred, (which we both plan to) then we are only halfway there. In other words, our glass is ONLY HALF FULL. We still GET to fill the other half. And we know so much more about what is worth filling it with than we did in our first fifty years. A simple shift in perspective can change everything. So I guess now I am a “glass half empty” kinda gal. And I like it that way. Emptiness with promise. Space to fill with even more things that I truly love. And plenty of space left to eventually share with the Cute Boy when he decides to show up. The pain of his not being here yet is an effective, driving, force that compels me to fill the emptiness with good things. With other forms of love.

So on this Valentine’s Day, I have chosen to take the sadness of not hearing from the Cute Boy and channel it into a message about the value of the emptiness. Tonight I chose to fill some of that emptiness watching a very UN-sentimental (yet entertaining) TV show with my daughter, followed by a command performance by my not-yet-2-year-old grandson doing the Chicken Dance with Elmo and Spiderman. Sheer joy on his sweet little face. Then I came home and listened to an amazing song that was written by a very old friend and sent to me today. Think I’ll fill my glass with some of that. And tomorrow when I face the emptiness again, I will find some more of that.

Years ago, I went to an art party at a friend’s home. She was selling paintings, and one of them just reached out and grabbed me. It felt like a visual representation of my soul. Scattered hearts and musical instruments, floating in a sea of blue. I really, really wanted that painting, but felt like it was out of my price range. My friend told my husband, and he bought it for me. It is still one of my favorite things. I recently pulled it out of storage, and yesterday I dusted it off, took a photo of it, and have posted it at the top of this message. Perhaps tomorrow I will actually hang it on my wall again. Identify what you really love, then put it where you can see it every day. With enough love around you, emptiness is not nearly so scary.