Enough Already

I recently opened YouTube on my phone looking for something specific and was bombarded by a slew of video headlines.

Because of the kind of content I tend to consume, my YouTube feed is a deluge of self-help-type hype:

“The one habit that will revolutionize your productivity!” 

“The secret to happiness you’ve been missing is…” 

“Do this one hack for 7 days and be blown away by the results!”

Scroll for more…

On this particular day, an instantaneous rage bloomed in my chest, my throat, my jaw, my cheeks. I probably snarled like a dog and stopped just short of hurtling the phone across the room.

What happened to me? Well, on another day I might have been pissed that my attention had been hijacked, but on this day, I was mad for another reason.

How often do we receive messaging that peace and bliss, health and beauty, love and success, are just around the corner?

True happiness is just one thought, practice, supplement, habit, retreat, program, or ideology away!

…right?

That premise is soooooooo freaking tempting to buy into. I know because I’ve done it about 12,872.96 times.

Each time it happens, I’ve felt electric that I’ve found the thing that will fix the problem, and each time I come away feeling…

• disappointed (when it didn’t work)

• ashamed (when I didn’t follow through)

• embarrassed (that I fell for it again)

• jealous (that other people seem to do it)

• furious (that it SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD) and

• helpless (that nothing will ever work)

Anyone else? Bueller?

I think what happened on the day-I-almost-threw-my-phone is that in three seconds of scanning headlines, I felt all those emotions all over again, and all at once.

If the rage could speak it would have screamed “ENOUGH!”

Enough with the premise that “you are not now, but you will be happy when…”

Enough with the assertion that “All you have to do is…”

Enough with the paradigm of quick fixes.

Life is just not like that. It’s super complex. It’s individual. It’s an unfolding and unpredictableadventure.

If the tiny voice behind the rage could speak, it would have said “Enough.”

Let me be enough.

Let this be enough.

 

If this post resonated for you, you may also appreciate this meditation that explores a sense of “Not Enough.”