For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is, “I didn’t get enough sleep.”  The next one is, “I don’t have enough time.”  Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us practically before we even think to question or examine it.  We spend most of the hours and days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of….we don’t have enough exercise.  We don’t have enough work.  We don’t have enough profits.  We don’t have enough power.  We don’t have enough wilderness.  We don’t have enough weekends.  Of course we don’t have enough money—ever. 

We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough—ever.  Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.  And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day.  We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of the lack….What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.  …..

We each have a choice, in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity.  Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency.  By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything.  Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance.  It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough.  Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all.  It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough and that we are enough.

Sufficiency resides inside each of us, and we can call if forward.  It is a consciousness, an attention, an intentional choosing of the way we think about our circumstances. 

“The extra pounds didn’t matter, as I look back, but the shame that came with those extra pounds was like an infectious disease.  That’s what I remember.  And so these days, my mind and my heart are focused less on the pounds and more on what it means to live without shame, to exchange that heavy and corrosive self-loathing for courage and freedom and gratitude.  Some days I do just that, and some days I don’t, and that seems to be just exactly how life is.”  (pg 37)

“I believe every person should be able to make the simple foods that nourish them, that feel familiar and comforting, that tell the story of who they are.  Each one of us should be able to nourish ourselves in the most basic way and to create meals and traditions around the table that tell the story of who we are to the people we care about.  And the only way to get there is start where you are.” (pg 40)

“I want to cultivate a deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even while I’m longing for something more.”  (pg 59)   

“Cooking is no different.  There are rock stars—people whose skill or perspective propels them to the top of their fields.  But when you ask them how they got there, they always tell you a story about working in a diner or making pasta with a grandmother.  They tell you about repetition, knife, heat, salt, butter.”  (pg 66)

“I tend to believe the worst about myself—I could never do this, I’m not that kind of person, I’ll always be like this, or I’ll never be able to get over that.  But then I think about that day….and I remember that people can change.  That I can change.  That the same old refrain can get rewritten, and that all it takes sometimes is paying attention to your tears, and ignoring that voice that tries to hypnotize us with “next year, next year, next year.”  (pg 80)

“I’ve long wanted to be better at accepting help, better at admitting weakness, better at trusting that people love me not for what I can do but just because they do.  It would have been lovely to learn those things on my own terms, when I wanted to, the way I wanted to.  But we never grow until the pain level gets high enough.”  (pg 120)