The Era Of "Good Enough"

What is the meaning of the word enough? I don't mean the dictionary definition, but instead what does the word mean to me? It's something I've been giving a lot of thought to for the last few years.

There was a time in my life when I was all about the "stuff". It seems I could never get enough. I had the pool, the SUV, the boat, the enormous television, the French crystal and many bathrooms. I'll never forget the day a friend told me that my house looked "like Pottery Barn threw up". (I think it was a compliment, but with her, you can never tell.)

You know what I discovered? Pools have to be cleaned. SUV's are hard to back up. Boats have to be hauled and stored. Nancy Grace is scary as hell on a huge television screen. Wine doesn't taste any different in a Baccarat goblet. And no matter how many bathrooms you have, someone will mess up every one of them.

When we sold our house in Las Vegas, we got rid of a few things to make our move across town easier. When we moved to Florida, we got rid of everything that we didn't consider to be essential. When we moved to Colorado, we discovered that many of our "essential" items that we dragged to Florida had never been used, so we got rid of them as well. Alright, so we kept the Bacarrat. You never know when the Queen (okay, "a" queen) will drop by for a drink.

For the last year we have been living with one bedroom, one bathroom, one set of dishes, and one place to eat off of them. My dining room table only seats four people. My television screen is only thirty two inches. My Ipod only holds two gigabytes. My car does not have automatic climate control. And you know what? Life is getting easier. It turns out that all that stuff never really brought happiness afterall. It was just stuff.

You know what does bring happiness? Cleaning the entire house from top to bottom in one hour and spending the rest of the day doing whatever we want - together. Just being together is enough for me. Well, that and my new capuccino machine. Let's not get crazy.