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You might recognize this week’s Guest Post author as quite the humorous writer here on Substack. What you might not know so well is her introspective side, which she is so graciously sharing with us today. And maybe it helps to view the world through the lens of laughter so that we can really understand what parts are important enough to pay attention to.
Please welcome
to SmallStack!Enough to Be Happy
by
A decade ago, I attended an art show on Happiness. It was a statistical wonderland of installation and interactive art nestled somewhere in the heart of West Philly. I vaguely recall something involving popsicle sticks; I vaguely recall a spinning wheel. There was a bike you could pedal to light up a sign. It felt slightly transgressive and slightly novel. With a certain amount of physical effort, something like “Be the change” or “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” or “Coors Light” lit up in neon letters across the wall. There were little uppers and downers listed by the elevator buttons.
I remember so little, from the exhibit and from life in general. But I do remember this: One of the pieces examined Happiness based on income and concluded that money actually could buy happiness.
Up to $74,000.
More than that, and money was no longer related to happiness at all. But it wasn’t really the money that secured happiness. It was the money that secured housing, sustenance, education, health care, stability. It was the money that allowed people to live and work in a way that allowed them to continue to live and work the next year and the year after that. They determined that 74k could provide a sustainable life.
The number has undoubtedly changed since ten years ago. (And let’s be honest, it’s possibly an annual income many of us have never seen.) The number probably fluctuates based on household size, cost of living and phases of the moon. But what matters is not the number itself; what matters is that there is a number at all. There is a proven threshold. There is a tipping point at which a certain amount of money is enough for what we all claim to be after.
Because don’t we all just want to be happy?
When Robin posed the SmallStack question, Do you want to stay small or grow? My initial thought was, Grow! Of course, grow! But when I started reflecting on the why, I couldn’t actually find the thread. I suppose I want to grow… to enough. But what does that mean? What is enough? Five hundred subscribers? One thousand? Ten thousand?
There is a proven threshold. There is a tipping point at which a certain amount of money is enough for what we all claim to be after.
Lately, I feel like I’m drowning in a world of too much. There must be enough—I am in the constant state of slogging through it all! Emails, notifications, real mail, meetings, portals, texts, messages, stuff—this grating minutiae of life. Most days, I feel like I’m flailing in a ball pit or flying in a bad dream: paddle as I might, my little duck legs will not move me forward.
Once I saw a show about a couple in Japan who had renovated the back of their truck and lived inside it. She gestured to the mat they rolled out to sleep on; he demonstrated how they cook with the hot pot. Life was getting too complicated; it shouldn’t be that complicated, she said.
But where do you bathe? The interviewer asked.
There are lakes; there are streams.
I think about that couple as my webbed feet thrash. She’s right. Life’s too complicated. It has become so complicated, in fact, I am not sure our fragile human souls were meant to assail the constant bedlam. It is so muddled, I find it difficult to see the forest for the trees amidst the deluge of information, of email, of BOGOs, of advertisements. It is so knotted, I sometimes cannot disentangle what I feel is true from the tentacles of a world that prioritizes plastic over people and guns over children. Many of the values of the world are not my values, and yet, I have to live in the world regardless. I have to survive here. So do you.
So how do we protect and preserve our best, most sacred creative selves whilst trying to climb out of the germy plastic ball pit that is the world? And more than that, how do we not just survive a world with values we don’t espouse, but create a world with ones we do?
Why was my knee-jerk reaction grow, grow, grow? I don’t even like large parties!
What if there is a tipping point to enough?
My initial response was born of the constant barrage of bigger, better, best—of more, faster, harder. It was tied to busy-ness and business, to technology, to #success, #lifegoals, #grateful. It was megabytes and megastores selling a life, along with the idea that it was a life I wanted.
Because if happiness is truly the goal, and there is more than enough, then why the heck aren’t we all elated?
Maybe we don’t actually want what the world is offering with its exhausting pace and rampant burnout. Maybe we want a life that is wholly our own, cultivated with thoughtfulness, curiosity, and sustainability for the people we hope to become. Maybe we deserve it too.
In Don Miguel Ruiz’s book on Toltec Wisdom, The Four Agreements, the Fourth Agreement is “Do Your Best.” I always associate this concept with enough. It lives in the solar plexus, tumbling around with identity, productivity, responsibility, energy, effort, and ego.
“If you try too hard to do more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough. When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself”.1
What if there is a tipping point to enough? What if accumulation at some point leads to depletion? It makes me think of living in a larger house than is necessary. At what point does your home shift from being a haven of comfort to a stressor filled with junk that doesn’t bring you joy? At what point does your home—or anything—start sapping the energy it was meant to restore?
And it makes me wonder: Do we want 1,000 subscribers who don’t read our work or 100 who do? Do we want 2500 free readers or 25 who think our work is worth paying for? Do we want 500 in a community who will never engage or 50 who are consistent, thoughtful, and invested? The metrics of the internet have us so seduced by quantity, but didn’t we start the work for its quality?
It is hard to confront the topic of enough. What if less is actually enough? What if all the pushing—the Type A-achievement-driven persona, the effort, the excelling, the grades, the drive, the energy, the force, the ferocity, the fighting—what if it isn’t getting me closer to who I want to be, but driving me away?
What if the only thing standing between me and enough to be happy is, in fact… me?
Ruiz states, “Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you’re expecting a reward.” For those of us who grapple with the concept of doing enough, having enough, creating enough, writing enough, marketing enough, networking enough, investing enough, saving enough, giving enough, trying enough, being enough—this is the quintessential truth. This is the joy, the pleasure, the essence, the eternal thread: Doing the thing for the sake of doing the thing. For the love of the work. For the person you become while doing it.
What is enough to be happy?
I am.
I am enough.
And so are you.
Kate Brennan is an Artist — Educator — Creator who writes musicals, plays & has taught across the country. She has work in McSweeney’s, Slackjaw, Belladonna, The Offing, Jane Austen’s Wastebasket, Frazzled & more. She was named a Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist for Visionaries in Musical Theatre & a Finalist for the Cultural Alliance Innovator Award. She is a member of Dramatist & AEA and holds an MFA from UVA. She runs the Substacks More Humor More Humanity as well as The Humor Stack (The Official Directory of Humor Stacks) & Evolving Artist (for artists and educators). Read more on Medium or check out her new creativity workbook.
I hope you’ll join us in thanking Kate for putting so much of herself and her creative drive into words so that we could find the same in ourselves—enough.
We, and this community, are all enough.
Robin Taylor & The SmallStack Team
Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Four Agreements. Amber-Allen Publishing, 2001
I love this perspective so much.
Anyone who has ever had to pay rent or utilities or feed a child or themselves knows there is a minimum.
We do a disservice when we romanticize small, because small that doesn’t meet the minimum is stressful and not kind to the soul.
But small, when it meets the ‘enough’, yes, that is something worth seeking. Beyond that is, I think, where we find the senseless noise and chaos.
This line really struck me: 'What if the only thing standing between me and enough to be happy is, in fact… me?' It's a powerful reminder that we often create our own obstacles. Thank you for the nudge to get out of my own way.