Before school started, at the Teacher Meet n Greet for Thing 2’s class, there was a bulletin board of ‘wishes’. In other words, items the class would like parents to volunteer to bring.
At the time, the 6 pieces of white felt seemed boring.
The 2 dozen styrofoam balls seemed unwieldy
Then I saw it:
One XXL pumpkin. That’s it! I’ll bring the pumpkin! Since I love all things fall, how fun would that be?
But just as I plucked the note from the bulletin board to claim responsibility for the pumpkin, the teacher said “No pressure or anything, but just so you know the dad who brought the pumpkin last year REALLY brought an enormous one”
That one sentence changed everything. It set into motion a thought process that is not uncommon for me.
All weekend I went from pumpkin patch to pumpkin fest to farmer’s market. I even eyed a robust beauty already in someone’s shopping cart at the grocery store and, for an instant, considering lifting it.
What is enough?
Here I’m just talking about a pumpkin but the ‘enough’ theme is a common thread throughout life for many of us.
The fear of not being good enough, smart enough, fast enough, thin enough, whatever, can be paralyzing.
While I think it’s more than fine to aspire to be better, faster stronger, sometimes there’s a tendency to minimize or take for granted the work we’ve already done and the things (fitness, success, goals etc.) we’ve already achieved.
Sometimes we fall short of our goals. Maybe we need to retool, regroup and come back stronger. But we also have to give ourselves credit for and appreciate the effort we gave today, just as we are.
So I pulled the trigger and got a damn pumpkin. I let Thing 2 pick it out. She’s thrilled with it. It’s big enough. More than enough.
