Are We Ever Enough?

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the many thought-provoking, heart-felt, meaningful questions that you sent in.  And if you didn’t send one yet, it’s not too late!  Email me privately at lesliesrajek@gmail.com and I will make sure your question gets posted anonymously.  I noticed several themes in what people wrote, and some of are them are: will I ever feel like I am enough?  Who am I really?  Is this all there is?  When will I find meaning in my life?  There were a bunch of other that I definitely want to get to (esp. the one about keeping one’s journals: YES!!!), but today I’m going to start with the question: will we ever feel like we are enough?  Here is the answer: No.

This is not meant to be glib or flippant.  But like a miracle (and I’m starting to believe that she is in fact some kind of miracle), a friend brought me some soup this morning because I’ve been under the weather, and she lent me this book The Church of 80% Sincerity by David Roche.  Click on his link immediately.  Go on.  I’ll wait.

Okay, so before I share with you some of David Roche’s hard-won wisdom, why I can answer the question of “will we ever feel like we are enough?” with certainty is because the one (and possibly) only useful things that I learned in graduate school is that if a topic is very popular in cultural discourse, e.g. if everyone is talking and writing about it ALL THE DAMN time, then we don’t know how to resolve it yet. 

And really, my friends, when was the last time you picked up a copy of Oprah’s magazine (the pulse of popular cultural and never to be underestimated) without reading some damn article about how to find your true worth, how to make your life more your own, and how to find fulfillment by moving to Fiji and starting a jewelry making business?)  My point is that NO ONE feels like we are enough, because if we did, we would stop talking about it, and start talking about things like, “How can we pool our collective power and make a difference in the world???”

I’m not in any way diminishing our struggles to feel adequate and enough in the world.  Heaven knows, I’ve rambled on about my own issue with this time and time again.  But what I wonder is what are we so afraid of?  Who tells us we are not enough and why, in God’s name (yes, in God’s name who made us in His image and would never, ever want us to be what we are: anything less than children of the King), do we go along with this bull#*&%?

Okay, here’s some wisdom from David Roche, courtesy of my own personal angel (you know who you are):

“I do believe that we each have a place inside of us where fear resides, that fear of being a sinner, carrying bad karma, untouchable.  Seeing and accepting one’s ‘flawed’ condition is a core human experience, and essential step in developing emotional maturity.  It is a basic human task, the task of redemption, and it is hard work.  There is no turning aside.  If we ignore this soul retrieval work, we remain fragmented, and powerless, vulnerable to fear…[Paradoxically,] I have found my wholeness through (and with) what first seemed to be my flaws.  Working though my fear and shame, I have come to discover that I am whole” (p. 44, emphasis  added).

My friends, I love you all so very, very much.  Keep believing that you are so loved and so chosen.  Please do the work. The work is what makes you enough, now and always, until the world without end, amen.  Please know that you are so, so, worth it.  The world needs more people like you! 

Enough

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet