Iris by side of house, March 2009
There's something about this iris that looks to me like it's talking to me.
Yabbering, really. Incessantly. Yada. Yada. Yada, it blabs.
It reminds me sometimes of my self-talk about what is — and isn't — getting done in my life.
I've been struggling with the concept of "enough-ness" this week.
Then, yesterday, I read the timely and wise words of Superhero Andrea Scher on the topic, Good Enough, and it really helped to crystallize something for me: I don't really have a relationship with enoughness. (Yet!)
Now, "not-enough-ness" is something I know very well.
I have lists and lists of things to do and accomplish. I can fall into bed at 1 a.m. and feel like I haven't done enough for the day. I can replay a conversation (or re-hash something I wrote or deflect a compliment) and see where I could improve or do better.
But enough-ness is something I could use a new relationship, too.
Patty Jackson, a wonderful coach my husband and I work with, has a great inspirational CD called Mind-full of Miracles. On one of the tracks, she talks about how the "not-enough" program runs on and on until you choose to stop it.
For me, flowers are great teachers about enough-ness.
Looking at this iris, all I see is its perfection.
With flowers they simply are…beautiful, blooming, growing, evolving. There is a sufficiency with flowers.
I mean, could you or I really do anything to improve a flower? (I didn't think so.)
Me just being Shannon is enough. You being you is enough.
Anything beyond that is just gravy.
And I intend to look at what enough looks like for me. Maybe it's stopping work at 8 p.m. Maybe it's knowing that everyday I did my best in the moment and that is enough.
Whatever it is I decide, I trust that it will — really and truly — be enough.
And know that you, too, are enough. Always. In all ways.
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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.