You Already Have Enough. Let It Change Your Life.

Thanksgiving is a beautiful holiday here in the US.

It’s a day for family and friends to gather, all centered around one big meal. Traditionally, the meal consists of turkey and potatoes, stuffing and green beans, and dessert like pumpkin or apple pie. But everyone celebrates a little bit differently.

It’s wonderful—my wife’s favorite meal of the year in fact.

The Thanksgiving Day preparation is an entire routine and ritual that, at times, can look a little hectic. At least it does in our home. There is a lot of work that goes into preparing the meal.

Often, both the women and men are scurrying about cooking and helping. As the kids get older, they might begin to help as well. Lots of cooks in the kitchen.

There are decisions to be made about what goes into the oven at just the right time, where to put things on the counter while they’re waiting, and if the table is getting set just right.

Plus, everyone is hungry the entire time because you’re saving space for the meal.

Everyone eventually sits down and the table is filled with dishes, like a full buffet.

In our family, we pray. And then, you eat.

Immediately, there’s a big rush of controlled chaos—people gathering food and filling their plates.

You grab your turkey and potatoes and stuffing and gravy. You start to wonder if the green beans are ever going to get passed your direction. You notice that the little kids are taking all the bread rolls and you might start to worry if there will be enough once the plate reaches you.

Where did the salt and pepper go? Did I get enough butter? And am I going to have room on this plate for the cranberries?

But eventually, you eat.

And there inevitably comes a point in the meal where you begin to feel full. You’ve eaten enough, and suddenly, you don’t need (or even want) any more food.

Instead, you lean back in your chair, content.

You’ve had enough.

Suddenly, everything changes. It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing at the table.

It doesn’t matter that the little ones are taking the last of the rolls. It doesn’t matter where the butter is, or the salt and pepper. It doesn’t matter that your cousin is going back for a third helping of the stuffing, or that someone else just took the last of the dark meat.

None of that matters anymore. You’ve had enough.

Regardless of the options in front of you, regardless of what everyone else is chasing and consuming, you don’t feel the need to do so. It’s a wonderful feeling of contentment.

That is the promise of enough. Once you have attained it, you begin to see everything differently.

—

Consider how this feeling of enough might change our lives in other areas:

What if we realized that we already have enough physical possessions?

What would happen if we looked into our closets and fully noticed that we owned enough clothes? Or that our house was big enough? That we had enough decorations, furniture, tools, or cars?

What if we fully believed that we already have enough stuff?

Suddenly, we would begin to see everything around us differently. It wouldn’t matter what other people are chasing or accumulating or buying.

It wouldn’t matter that my neighbor is buying another car, I already have enough.

It wouldn’t matter that there’s a new sale at Kohl’s, I have enough.

It wouldn’t matter that today is Black Friday, I have enough.

It wouldn’t matter that Christmas is coming and someone else might get more gifts than me, I have enough.

And it wouldn’t matter that the magazines tell me my clothes are out of style or the newest tech gadget has more camera pixels than ever before, I have enough.

This is a realization that would change everything about us. We could fully remove ourselves from the consumerism that dominates so many peoples’ lives.

It would free up money, time, space, and energy for the things in life that really matter.

It’s an unbelievably freeing feeling to discover that you already have enough in your life.

—

There are, of course, many people in the world who do not have enough. But even those who do, rarely recognize it.

This is because we live in a world that shouts to us constantly that we don’t have enough. We are being sold more and more every day. They are constantly placing more dishes on the table, convincing us that we haven’t eaten enough yet, encouraging us to war against our neighbors to be the one with the fullest plate of food.

But as Maya Angelou once said, “We need much less than we think we need.”

And once we can look around and realize that we do indeed have enough, our lives begin to change in beautiful ways.