ENOUGH: Birthday Resolutions

Birthday Resolutions

I have a tradition of making birthday resolutions rather than New Year’s resolutions for the very simple reason that my birthday happens to fall in mid-spring when it is a helluva lot easier to make a fresh start than it is in the cold, miserable pit of winter.

This birthday, as I took my walk – on a nice, sunny spring day, thank you very much – I began to reflect on my age, as one often does on one’s birthday (which frequently makes one fall into murky existential gloom … but I digress). I recalled an article I read recently about reaching middle age and realizing you no longer have to live up to anyone else’s expectations or prove anything to anyone.* You know you’ll never fit back into the jeans you wore in high school. Never climb Mount Everest. Never become a rock star. And you’re okay with that because by now you know you are enough.

But enough is a versatile word. (Look at it for about 10 minutes and it doesn’t even look like a word anymore. Go ahead. Do it. You’ll see.) It can take the form of several parts of speech: adverb, pronoun, exclamation. And be defined in a number of ways: “as much or as many as required”; “to a moderate degree; fairly” or “used to express an impatient desire for the cessation of undesirable behavior or speech” – as in “Enough is enough!” and “I’ve had enough!” 

As I walked, I began to think of a whole lot of occasions when I’ve used the word “enough” … enough of them (see what I did there?) to very possibly provide the ingredients for an interesting series of blog posts.

·         Good enough. Wise enough. Old enough. Young enough. Tough enough. Pretty enough.

·         Had enough. Done enough. Worried enough. Cried enough.

·         Enough money. Enough work. Enough stuff. Enough is enough.

(By now you’ve no doubt noticed that the word “enough” no longer looks like a word, assuming you have not already gone through the exercise recommended above.)

So I decided to begin the “Enough” blog as this year’s birthday resolution. I invite you to join me on my journey as I examine the many aspects of “enough” in my life and hopefully encourage you to reflect on those same aspects of yours.

And if you get tired of reading, just say, “Enough,” go take a walk and reflect. Just watch out for that murky existential gloom.

*Here’s a link to a similar article, though this was written by a woman almost half my age … don’t I wish I’d had this insight at 30!