Table with tapas

Today’s Photo Friday theme is Food, so here’s a rerun of the “table with tapas” shot I blogged after my birthday in January.

Table with a view

Although I have more than a month before my next birthday, I’ve started to think about what I want to do to celebrate the Big 4-0 this year. Interestingly, I can’t think of anything I want to splurge on. It isn’t that I don’t want to celebrate a milestone that some women find depressing; instead, I find myself so grateful for the metaphorical full plate that is my life, I can’t think of anything I want that I don’t already have.

In my Zen school, we sometimes use the term “enough-mind” to describe the sense of satisfaction you feel when things are, as Goldilocks would say, “just right.” “Enough-mind” doesn’t feed the extremes of starving or splurging; “enough-mind” pushes away from the table, satisfied, at precisely the moment it feels full, not stuffed. “Enough-mind fish never touches the hook” is one of the idiomatic phrases Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say. If you have a mindset of having “enough,” you won’t be tempted by even the most alluring bait. If you are content with what you have, you won’t swallow anything hook, line, and sinker.

Ambience

In the days immediately after my divorce, I experienced a strange thrill of satisfaction whenever I went grocery shopping. The simple act of filling my cart with food, paying for it with money I myself had earned, and then unpacking it into my own refrigerator, shelves, and cupboards felt like an unimaginable luxury. What richness there is, I thought, in having a week’s worth of food close at hand, even if that food is something as plain Jane as oatmeal.

Interestingly, I’ve not lost that sense of awed wonder in the four years since my divorce: I still feel amply and wonderfully blessed when I come home from the grocery store. Last night, as I made my weekly commute between Keene and Newton, I arrived with groceries: enough food to last the weekend and week. J and I have planned a quiet Thanksgiving: nothing fancy, just enough. It feels good to know how much your metaphorical larder can hold; having stocked that, you need nothing else. Enough is enough, and sometimes that’s very good indeed.