The Grace of Enough

Puerto Vallarto, photo by my son

Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It’s the same with happiness, the very same…happiness doesn’t depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There’s a saying about it in Taoist ethic: “Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This photo was taken by my son on a trip our family took to Puerto Vallarta. As I looked through my photos, I was struck by how this image seemed to portray pure happiness. Arms open, ready to capture the moment. Nothing else needed or desired in that place and time.

Not surprisingly, as an avid reader and a writer, I appreciate words. I recently came across one that caught my attention: satiety. It’s not a word we hear often, but it has meaning beyond its usual association with food. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the quality or state of being fed or gratified to or beyond capacity.”

When is enough, enough? I believe it’s something many of us struggle with. We tend to measure abundance by quantity—how much we have, how much we’ve accomplished, how much we can fit into our lives. Yet Solzhenitsyn suggests that satisfaction has very little to do with quantity and everything to do with how we experience what is already ours.

Decluttering and organizing have become increasingly popular. Maybe somewhere along the way we have begun to recognize that more does not always mean better. Sometimes it just means more.

But possessions are only the most visible example. We can want more experiences, more recognition, more attention, more accomplishments. We can fill our calendars as easily as we fill our closets. There always seems to be something else to acquire, achieve or anticipate. The danger is that while looking toward what comes next, we fail to appreciate what is already here.

As I’ve gotten older, I think I understand that better. Happiness seems less connected to the extraordinary and more to the ordinary things I once might have taken for granted. A good book. Morning coffee. A walk. Time with people I love. A conversation that makes me think. None of these is particularly grand, but perhaps that is precisely the point.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of getting older—the realization that enough isn’t necessarily something we finally acquire. It may be something we learn to recognize. The life we once hurried through in search of something more can turn out to contain much of what we were looking for all along.

And that brings me back to the photograph. I wasn’t thinking about satiety when my son took it. I wasn’t thinking about contentment or happiness or whether I had enough. I was simply there, completely present in that moment. Nothing needed to be added. For that moment, I had enough.

Peace be with you.

If you’re new here, welcome. I write about aging with grace, finding beauty in everyday life, and the quiet moments that remind us what matters most. I’m so glad you’ve stopped by.