I’ve been meditating daily for more than two decades. That probably sounds more impressive than it feels, because it implies that the challenge of establishing the habit persisted longer than it actually did. The truth is that after a couple of months, it began to feel as routine as taking a shower or going to the bathroom.
It can be more difficult to maintain the habit when I travel, but the novelty of being in a new place often adds a layer of curiosity and enthusiasm. I feel lucky for the opportunities I’ve had over the years to meditate in some sensorially spectacular places.
A couple of years ago, Matt and I spent Easter weekend hiking in West Texas. Each morning, before sunrise, I carried a chair outside our little concrete casita and sat gazing out at the vast Chihuahuan Desert landscape.
I practiced one of my favorite approaches to mindfulness: noticing the experience of seeing, hearing, and feeling—both the sights, sounds, and sensations in my body, and the mental images, internal talk, and emotions I can feel in my body.
If you had seen me sitting there as the sun came up, you might have assumed I was trying very hard to savor the experience. Maybe you thought I was deeply relaxed, that my mind was quiet, or that I was trying to somehow take some of the desert home with me by capturing it in my mind.
In reality, my subjective experience was considerably messier.
I wasn’t taking in an idealized desert sky. I was seeing the desert sky through my 58-year-old eyes. The bright colored flowers were blurry without my glasses. As the sky brightened, I could see the familiar floaters that had drifted through my vision since I was 23. They were particularly prominent against the brightening expanse of pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds. In addition to the personal window I can’t wipe clean, there are the intermittent images my mind conjures from the past or about the future.
The desert was extraordinarily quiet. Which also meant I could clearly hear the white-noise hiss of my tinnitus. It’s been with me for more than a decade, and I’ve come to recognize it almost as the sound silence makes now. There were also the sounds of my mental chatter coming and going within all the quiet.
And then there was my body. Some sensations were comfortable and settled; others weren’t. There were little aches, stiffness, itches, and a signal from my bladder emerging. Unpleasant feelings were along for the ride amid the pleasant ones: subtle restlessness, the residue of a disagreement from the day before, and the gradual evidence of caffeine circulating.
None of this ruined the sunrise.
In fact, this is largely what I’ve been practicing all these years.
Not trying to make myself believe that my life is enough. Not telling myself that I should accept difficult circumstances or be grateful for what I have.
I’m aiming for something much smaller and more immediate: Can I experience what I’m seeing, hearing, or feeling right now as enough, just as it is?
Sometimes I can. Sometimes the desire for something to be different is much stronger. Enoughness isn’t an attitude or “mindset” that I can impose on every experience to beat it into blissful submission.
It is, however, something I’ve gotten better at detecting.
A sound can be enough as it is.
The temperature of one hand can be comfortable enough for now.
Not every exhale needs to live up to something I have in mind.
The view in front of me doesn’t need elements added to it or removed.
Maybe enoughness is less a conclusion we reach than a sensation we can learn to recognize: a momentary weakening of the impulse to improve, enhance, prolong, remove, or otherwise interfere with what’s already happening.
My grandmother Donna used to say, usually after spending a little extra money or giving some away, “You can’t take it with you.”
She was right.
But perhaps there’s a version of taking that has less to do with holding on to an experience than with learning how to take it in.
I couldn’t bring that West Texas sunrise home with me. A photograph can’t preserve the experience. My memory can’t either.
But I can use experiences like that—and much more ordinary ones—to strengthen my capacity to recognize moments when nothing needs to be added or taken away. Even moments that carry uncertainty, ugliness, unpleasant sounds, or discomfort.
I don’t need to pay this kind of attention every waking minute.
I try to do it more often than never.
Today’s attention exercise is an experiment in recognizing that quieter signal: nothing about this particular sight, sound, or sensation needs to change right now.
Exercise
This attention exercise invites you to notice enoughness at the perceptual level. By exploring sights, sounds, body sensations, and breathing without trying to improve them, we practice recognizing moments when nothing needs to be added, removed, or changed.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
When something pleasant makes you want more. Before reaching for the next bite, song, episode, photograph, purchase, or experience, take a few seconds to notice what “enough” feels like.
When you catch yourself subtly fighting an ordinary moment. Waiting in line, sitting in traffic, hearing an irritating sound, or feeling restless can become opportunities to find one sensory detail that doesn’t need to change.
When an experience feels especially worth savoring. Instead of trying to hold onto a sunset, a conversation, a meal, or a quiet morning, experiment with letting one moment be complete before the next one arrives.
