“I am enough. I am doing enough.”

If there was ever a mantra that is used daily, sometimes hourly, it would be this month’s mantra, “I am enough. I am doing enough.” Like most people, the “Greek Chorus” in my head can be quite symphonic most days, singing arias about my many deficiencies. It has taken work, tremendous work, to quiet the operatic diatribe, not allowing it to paralyze me from doing anything at all. I can say with some amount of confidence that the first part of this mantra, “I am enough” is less problematic for me now than it had been 10 years ago. That is the gift of age, I suppose. It’s only taken me 50 plus years to fully understand that I am enough.

It is the second part of the mantra that is my personal Achilles heel, even to this day, even as I write this blog. Sometimes when I’m in conversation with someone and they ask about what I had been doing, there is a moment of panic when I feel as if nothing I had been doing is worth revealing. The caveat to this panic is my intellectual understanding that there is absolutely nothing wrong with not doing much of anything since, for some of us, life is challenging enough without the added pressure of needing to prove our worth by meeting some ridiculous threshold of what productivity should look.

Usually, when I tell them about the things I am working on, the general reaction is that I have a great deal going on, regardless of how I feel about any of it. This reaction never ceases to amaze me. Sadly, I have a hard time believing what they are telling me. If put in some perspective, the many projects I am working on at any given moment can make me sound like an over-achiever or an over-achiever with an attention disorder.

Since I always feel as though I’m not doing enough of anything, I tend to overload on things to do, taking on responsibilities and projects at a time that sounds absurd in the recounting to a normal human being. After many years, I have learned that this overloading has a deleterious effect where I become exhausted by it all, the exhaustion igniting my depression, and very likely ending up in bed for days on end unable to do anything at all.

As a result of my mental response to doing too much, this mantra had become a much necessary reminder in my constant vigilance in managing my mental illness of depression. So, you can see how this mantra is one that is in constant rotation in my personal life. When I was younger I used to blame my parents and their expectations as the reason for never feeling as though anything I did was enough or worthwhile. Again, age has a way of clarifying certain ideas as being irrelevant, ridiculous, and perhaps not true.

I now know my parents only wish for my well-being and happiness, wholly separate of degrees, books published, or any other accolades one strives to receive. Ironically, it is now my parents reassuring me that there is no need for me to be doing so much, that nothing is as important as my mental and physical well-being. So, each day I get up, if I see that my calendar is not jam-packed with appointments, I have to take a breath before the Greek Chorus takes over. I suspect this battle of feeling I am doing enough of whatever will be a lifelong challenge, but one

I know I can control, even if I can’t overcome my feelings of inadequacies completely. “I am doing enough.”