It's Enough

Share

From time to time, I will pause before answering when people ask me how I am. If you're ignorant of some of the issues going on in my life, suffice it to say that I have problems same as you, similar in substance though they may differ at sidewalk level. When I am asked on the spur of the moment to take stock of the situation, the things that most quickly jump to the forefront of my mind are the things that weigh on my mind. I suspect that is true for most of you as well, that the problems and concerns are the first things of which you think. Naturally, I am tempted to focus on them.

Last night, while I was trying to figure out what to do, I turned on an episode from a show I liked while I cleaned the kitchen floor, the fridge, and the sink. At the end of the episode, when I was paying attention, the lead character told one of the others that he was acting nice because he had a good day. The other character said, "You've been chased by the law, shot at, harbored known fugitives, and you call that a good day?"

The lead said, "I still have my ship."

"That's not much."

"It's enough."

A few months back, I ordered an old Spanish Thaler off the internet. You might know them as "pieces of eight", because the eight pieces are eight fragments of a Spanish Thaler, or "Dollar" from which our currency in America originally sprang. I cut it into eight pieces and mounted it in a display on the wall. The eight pieces represent the eight categories of total wellness, of which I have had seven for a very long time. Several times in the last week or so, when I've felt especially down, I have looked at it and realized that to have 7 of 8 is really a great deal.

Today, there are people who are far worse off than we. I am grateful I do not live in the Mississippi delta, where flooding threatens total destruction. I am grateful I do not live near Fukoshima, where the earthquake shifted the land enough that the cities now flood with the rising tides. I didn't die in a mine accident in Idaho, and I wasn't visited by Seal Team 6 last night. Life is pretty good.

I'm not really sure anyone has all eight pieces. What I do know is that the people who have only the one I lack would desperately like a few more, and that to get that one, in some cases I might have to sacrifice some of the others. I may not have what I like, but I like what I have and that I have something to like. And that's enough.

I leave you with a song from Irving Berlin's "Holiday Inn"

http://youtu.be/Gn-X0EucLT0

Song starts at 2:05 in this clip and runs through 3:11

It's easier to focus on the things at the front of our minds. Instead of focusing on what I lack, I work to keep my focus on what really is. Besides, I know that many people appear to have it all, but they're like ducks on the pond- calm and collected on the surface, but paddling like mad beneath it. Truth is, no matter what's going on at this particular moment, we have this moment, and that there have been and may yet be many more, a significant number of which will be sweet, and that will be enough.