Lesson Nineteen: The Weight of Enough

Lately, the weight of the world has felt heavier.

I do not know if there is a clear reason. Maybe it is seasonal. Maybe it is exhaustion. Maybe it is simply what happens when you finally slow down long enough to look at your life with an editor’s eye, searching for any reason to reject the story you have been telling yourself.

Everything starts to feel conditional.

Make money.

Not enough.

Make more so I can have the things I want.

But will it ever be enough?

If I downsize and live simpler, will I just crave the things I used to have?

Workout harder.

Lose five more pounds.

Add an inch to the arms.

Burn myself out.

Get injured.

Eat. Drink. Repeat.

End up ten percent worse than where I started.

Chase career. Build legacy.

Realize most of that chase is just another way of chasing money.

Compromise character somewhere along the way.

Then remember that one day I will rot in a box, eaten by worms, and outside of a fraction of a percent of humans, no one is remembered in any meaningful way.

And somehow, I am supposed to take all of this seriously.

Sometimes I think life is meaningless.

Then I remember the meaning is supposed to be the impact we leave.

Then I feel guilty for not being more present for the people who matter most.

Then I tell myself I will break the cycle tomorrow.

And tomorrow becomes the loop.

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

What unsettles me most is that none of these thoughts are new.

Marcus Aurelius wrote almost two thousand years ago that everything is fleeting, that fame, wealth, and achievement disappear as quickly as breath.

The writer of Ecclesiastes looked at the world and concluded that it was all vapor and striving after wind.

Even modern philosophers wrestled with whether the search for meaning itself is the point.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I was not having a personal crisis.

I am having a very human one.

I tell my kids that it is about who you are, not what you are.

And yet, I struggle to honor that myself.

Because if I am being honest, it is not about keeping up with the Joneses.

It is about being the Joneses.

I let outside influences weigh on me more than I want to admit.

Sometimes it is not even serious criticism, just jokes, comments, or offhand remarks.

But they land heavier than they should.

I never really felt validated growing up.

So now, the moment I sense disappointment from someone, even imagined, I feel like I have blown everything.

Like the whole structure collapses at once.

In my mind, it is never enough. I will never be enough.

Personal flaw. Note to self - work on this.

I do not know if having a mind that thinks this way is a blessing or a curse.

I appreciate being able to think deeply.

But sometimes I wish I were some dumb ogre who drank, smoked, and never had a coherent thought.

There is a strange peace in not questioning anything. Simply existing.

I want to be open about this.

I also know many people will look at it as a weakness.

How do we navigate a life where we crave simplicity when achieving that simplicity requires sacrifice, and sacrifice makes everything but simple?

In 1950, the average American home was just under 1,000 square feet.

You worked your job.

You ate dinner at home.

You sent your kids to college.

You took vacations.

You died.

Is that really living?

Where is the balance between the life everyone claims to want and the modern hunger for more?

Social media shows us million-dollar “simple” farmhouses with designer kitchens, pretending that this version of simplicity is accessible when, statistically, it is not for most people.

The philosopher Albert Camus once asked whether life was even worth living.

Not because life is bleak, but because the search for meaning never really ends.

So what do we do with our gifts?

Is it a waste of talent not to grind and achieve everything possible?

Is it wrong to dread existence when the fact that it exists at all is almost mathematically impossible?

Where is the line between ambition and contentment?

Is happiness ever found in the goal or only in the pursuit?

Is it laughable to think any of this has meaning when one day we will be dust and forgotten?

Should we be careful stewards of money, or run up the tab as high as we can and laugh our way into the grave?

How do we break the cycle so that we do not spend the best years of our lives worrying about how we are going to live a decent one?

I do not know.

But I do know this.

If we do not ask these questions, we do not choose our lives.

We inherit them.

As the new year approaches, I keep thinking about how strange it is that a date on a calendar can feel so powerful. January first is not magical. The world does not reset at midnight. Nothing truly changes unless we decide it does. And yet, these moments matter. They act as sparks. They interrupt the loop. They permit us to pause, to look honestly at where we are, and to choose something slightly different than yesterday. Maybe that is all change ever really is. Not a complete reinvention, not a dramatic breakthrough, but a small, conscious decision to live with a little more intention than we did before. If this reflection accomplishes anything, I hope it is that. A pause. A spark. A reminder that even inside all this uncertainty, we still get to choose how we show up tomorrow.