I am enough

There are some sayings that I struggle with, or used to struggle with.  Mary Oliver’s poem The Journey has the line ‘determined to save the only life you could save’; or Oriah Mountain Dreamers poem The Invitation has the line “are you prepared to disappoint another to be true to yourself” or recently Brene Brown saying the answer to hiding our more vulnerable selves is being able to say to my self “I am enough’.  I’ve struggled with all three of these sentences at one time or another because they initially seemed a little selfish or self centred.  The first two sentences I finally saw the wisdom in over the past few years; and this week was the turn of “I am enough”.

Jane captures the beauty of Elsamere & Lake Naivasha with her pen

We have been back on the shores of Lake Naivasha this week. Our second visit to train another 150 people who live in fragile and vulnerable communities. We stay at Elsamere, the home of the late Joy Adamson (of Born Free fame), share afternoon tea with the Colobus Monkeys, the early mornings and late afternoons mesmerised by flights of thousands of Pelicans, share the evening meal with the most gracious Sam or Johnson, the managers of Elsamere and then manage our journey to bed through the hippos and zebras coming up to our door to graze.

The beauty of the swamplands of Lake Naivasha

The three days of training are exhausting, but in a great way.  When 94% of those you train say that the training will greatly change their lives you’d have to be a little numb to not be excited.  Each programme we deliver is different. Each has its own flavor. Usually one of the three days is tougher than the others. This week it was day 3. Day one and two had gone well, felt energized, felt like we were  making good progress. But for some reason day 3 felt tough. We usually realise by mid morning that something is disturbing the ripples of our minds and we start processing hard to work out what it is.

When you’ve spent your life, and your parents before you and their parents before them, feeling pretty hopeless about the future, the water table of your self-esteem gets less and less.  Day 3 is when reality hits people. They realize ‘hey, this training is for real and it ends in a few hours time and I’m both excited by the new possibilities that my new mind sets and skills have given me…..but……”. But what? But, ‘am I enough?’.  I don’t know enough, don’t have experience enough, don’t know what it is like to have someone tell me that I have potential and cheer me on, don’t earn enough, aren’t clever enough….don’t feel like I am enough. 

I felt their struggle more acutely than ever on day 3 because five days earlier I had found myself trapped in a deep rip tide within myself and the only way out of it was the insight ‘hey, I am enough’.  I realised in a grateful moment of clarity that ‘I am enough’ does not mean I am everything, I am perfect, I don’t need others, but it does mean….well, that there’s enough of me…. enough inside of me to make it, to live a growing life.

So, for the 150 flower and vegetable pickers of Lake Naivasha,  as we fought a good fight together on day 3, I was aware that whilst I could repeatedly tell them, “you are enough”, I knew that ultimately it is only a gift we can give to ourselves  - “I am enough”.

TW