Enough

All around there is a powerful message that we need to change — change our consumer habits, change the way we work, change how we eat, how we organize, CHANGE. Combined with this CHANGE is that we need to do so NOW. There is a powerful credo that change and innovation is key to our organisations, our lives, our planet.

As a consultant and facilitator working with social innovation and dedicating my life to transformation, I can’t say that I disagree with this desire to see organizations, people, and our earth be healthy and balanced. I also long for a more peaceful, sustainable world operating in harmony both among people and with the rest of nature. It’s not only the way I earn my living, it’s something that arises from a deep sense of passion within me.

And yet….bombarded with all of these messages every day, I notice that something disturbs me. Increasingly I feel the shrill tone that whispers of desperation and judgement, that we are somehow ourselves insufficient, that we are not enough.

When I am exposed to too many of these messages, when I let them in and follow the energy that they generate, I become angry, closed down to my creativity, frustrated, strident, deeply judgemental and arrogant towards others who are, obviously, even less enough than the rest of us.

Sitting outside the other day I wondered, what would happen if we look at this differently. What if the world as we know it is ENOUGH. The climate is enough, the structures we have of government are enough, the organisations are enough, we have enough resources, and most importantly we as people are enough.

Looking at the water I felt myself relax, all of a sudden I saw the beauty of the birds building their nests the best they could even in the unseasonably wet and cold spring weather — it was enough for them and they did what they could, creatively figuring out how to go from this sort of “enough”. The plants were also growing using their resources doing what they could. The people I know in so many organisations doing all they can to do their work well in tough circumstances — they do enough.

With this shift, new perspectives come to mind. More grounded, deeper, more linked to the ecology of what actually is. Using the wisdom of enoughness something different grows. I think that from acceptance that what is around us is enough then what may want/need to shift will become evident and simple steps will emerge. If we come from enough, accepting what is, as we work humbly within that, instead of believing that we KNOW what is not right, we may come to truly connected and wise solutions for the challenges that face us especially in a time of such change and shift.

Thought history we are blessed with examples of how our innovations from the place of not enough bite us in the back. We do not know the solutions no matter how smart we are — all we can do is look at what is — know it’s enough and listen inside to whatever we feel will help the next generations also have enough.