Going Alone

As a young man, I tried anything I could to find enough. Not knowing just what was enough. I tried it all or mostly all. I did school, which was seemingly enough at the time, though in the end it was not enough. Something else was needed. I then tried my hobbies: diving, swimming, motorcycle riding and adventuring. In the moment, adventure nearly always seems enough. But in fact, it never really is. For adventure, like education, are distractions–albite perhaps very useful distractions–from the emptiness which we work so hard to fill and make go away by virtue of our sense of fullness. For, how can we feel what is lacking if our own senses are always alive with the sense of life? And so, I went on through my youth, and then middle age, filling the days with useful work, and happy feeling play, and relationships bound with warm connections. Always something, always something more, something new, a life of novelty and diversity and change and even pain and difficulty and challenge, which also are mere distractions to life. And none of it worked to fill my life with enough. No quantity or quality of anything made the difference I was sure I could find. My life grew more empty and hollow as I aged and I ran out of new things to buy and be and to try. That is, until I’d simply had enough. I’d had enough of the things which I thought would somehow be enough. And I gave up on more. And I gave up on what I had. Though I did keep the human connections which I had made. I kept these to the best of my ability. And I kept the shirt on my back, and a few essential whatnots–but not much. Very little indeed. Only photographs and memories, in fact. And I let all the rest pass. And now I have just the right amount to be enough. Though maybe I still have a little too much. For now, I understand that nothing IS enough. And I only seek enough.