It’s a Five and Maybe Enough
Click here for a full audio-visual version of this adventure vignette.
I had to pull out the calculator to figure out how many years I will be on this birthday. I was surprised it was a “big one” – a number that ends in zero or five.
I’ve had an awful lot of trips around the sun. Aren’t I lucky. Aren’t I sore. My back talks to me, but I have a back to talk to me. I have a mind that can listen. With that mind, I wonder if half is over. I wonder if more than half is over. That is not a thing I get to know.
What if this will be the last year? What if I find out the end is coming? What if I don’t and it appears from nowhere? It scares me to even put that down as if doing so is calling it into being. What if I don't have much left? What if I have a lot left? They’re both scary prospects.
But I would also be proud of myself for the choices I made in the last five years. That I am finally somewhere that feels right. I got here by fist fighting my tendency toward fear which is a grinding thing to do, and it is not a battle complete.
I don’t know who I am and I don’t think I will. What do I want to do with my wild and precious life? I don’t know the answer and can’t see how that future fog is a beautiful thing.
Is it enough to go out to the mountain and be not especially fast or not even reach the peak? Is it enough to put my arms around my child without being able to fix all the things wrong with him that are also wrong with me? Is it enough to sit at this desk and write and then be told no over and over and over again? Is it enough to run five mediocre miles? Is it enough to heat up nuggets in the oven again this Thursday?
Consistently, my answer has been no and that somehow feels like a betrayal of the fact that I get to be here. I may soon not get to be here. Will I also believe that I’m not enough when I’m close to done?
I don’t know whether to try to force the year into a set of parameters that I set for it or just let it be. I don’t know.
So here I sit unsure and out of control, and not in the cute manic-pixie-dream-girl kind of way because I have folds around my eyes and mouth. They are deeper and they are not erasable. They are days in the sun and I loved those days but I am marked nonetheless.
There might be a handful of minutes in the upcoming time where my foundation feels solid, a smooth sidewalk of concrete. There will also be times when the is path indiscernible in thick brush and I’ll have to wayfind.
I hope I’ll be able to remember that getting to be here will need to be enough. Even if not in the moment, because that’s too tall an order.
I get to be here and it’s enough, my dear. It’s more than enough. And so are you.