March's Prompt: Let’s Have a Conversation About Enough

The world was cracking open and we have had enough!

Every month, we pull a prompt from our BreakBread World Conversation Card Deck and offer a reflection. This month we pulled the “enough” prompt:

What is enough? Who is enough? When is enough, enough? Who decides?
Share a story about enough.

The “enough” prompt was auditioned at a BreakBread dinner on March 5, 2021. It’s hard to believe five years have passed. Martha and i were holed up in our one-bedroom Washington Heights apartment with Kahlo, our cat, and Franklin, our dog (who at that time were mortal enemies). March 2021 marked one year of living in the shadow of COVID 19. New cases and COVID deaths were being charted daily in the New York Times and Washington Heights, an enclave in northern Manhattan, was among the hardest hit areas at that time. The groups designated as priority for receiving the recently released COVID vaccine were expanding, public schools were beginning to open for limited in-person learning, and overnight subway service had been partially restored. The stuckness of a pandemicized world was cracking open and we had had enough! And i honestly think that’s where this prompt came from.

The BreakBread Process was in its formative stages. As a panacea to the pandemic, BreakBread had only ever been done online at that point. Joining us that evening via Zoom were our friends Theon, who invited his friend, Tekara, and Alex, who invited her friend, Reha. Even though this was Zoom, these were actual dinners and we all took this quite seriously setting tables, lighting candles, and even dressing for dinner. Then there’s the food… Martha and i had whipped up pasta with broccoli rabe, Theon showed up with Japanese curry & rice, Alex and Reha were together and shared a meal of salmon, rice, and grilled broccoli while Tekara took the prize with sweet potato & collard green soup with a side of coconut cornbread.

How do i remember all this? We actually keep a record of every BreakBreak: when it happened, where it was held, who showed up, what we ate, and to some degree, what was shared. Back then we used the Zoom chat function to jot down juicy or inspiring conversational morsels.

As i look back at the chat notes from five years ago i am amazed at the ground we covered in that one-hour conversation.

We learned that Reha is “strangely good” at racket sports.

We talked about boundaries and how “enough” can be a discovery that results from putting up a boundary — on one side of the fence is “not enough” on the other, contentment.

We talked about how in the United States we live in this odd paradox where on the one hand, cultural consumerism has us in a not-enough mindset of forever wanting more (e.g. transient consumer goods and ephemeral experiences) while at the same time we’re discouraged from wanting better healthcare or more maternity leave, and vacation time.

There was a discussion of the lack of grounding that comes from not being connected to the land and how this lack can be expressed through the insatiable quest for more.

And of course no conversation about enough would be complete without the mention of speed and how fast everything seems to be moving and are we ever moving, growing, evolving fast enough or is it enough to just keep up?

Toward the end of the conversation as the timer was running out i invoked Earthrise - the photograph taken in 1968 by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders. This is the first time humans saw an image of our blue cloud-painted planet as viewed across the desolate lunar horizon. I was four-years old when it was taken and for a moment during my childhood it was everywhere. It always felt, and to this day still feels magical. That on this ball spinning silently in space was me, my family, all the people i cared about and things that mattered along with all the other people – if only society as a whole could see the same thing. Maybe this was the naivete of my child-eyes, but wasn’t it Pablo Picasso who said “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”?

For me, this photograph is a portrait of enough. And while we’re all caught in our never-enough trance fighting over borders, hoarding resources, racing for domination, this tiny marble of a home is both everything we need and all we’re going to get. What will it take for us to be enough, feel like we have enough, say “Enough!!!” to all our not-enoughness.

As i come to the close of this piece, i offer you a sacred practice of enoughness – gratitude. Who and what are you thankful for? Gratitude is the fence where not-enough ends and abundance begins. I thank Theon and Takara, Alex and Reha, and of course Martha, all who showed up with vigor for that mid-pandemic oasis of a BreakBread. Oh, and thank you Izzy, the cat who jumped onto Alex’s dinner table to say “Enough of this Zoomy chit-chat stuff… i want some attention!!! Purrrrrrrrr…”

As always, we encourage you to have your own conversation about enough and let us know how it went.