On the Days When the World Is Too Much, I Am Finally Enough

To every soul struggling right now, consider this your reminder

We don’t often talk about how adults can become overstimulated. There are days when the world around me feels like it’s pressing in. I am surrounded by noise, responsibility, and demands. Then, in my head, there are worries competing for attention. But my attention is splintered. I cannot focus. I can only retreat.

On the days when the world around me is too much, I am finally enough.

In all of the chaos of a busy life, I begin to ask myself what will help. What do I need now, in this moment, to feel better? Sometimes, it’s not my usual fare of comfort shows. Instead, the answer will emerge clearly. I need a short nap. I need to eat something. I need to go sit outside in the sunlight for a few minutes. I need to stretch. I need to attend to my garden.

I find the thing that will help. I cannot solve all the problems of the world. I can’t even solve my own right now. What I can do is seek out comfort when I’m feeling overwhelmed. A cup of tea. Calm in the storm.

It finally feels like enough. I finally feel like enough. I accept all that I can’t control, but I can take a moment of mindfulness to center myself. This is still my life — even in the moments that are painful. So, what will I do about it?

Will I make it worse? Add to the storm? I could, you know. Or do I self-soothe? Do I hold my own hand through the worst of it or find a friend whose hand I can hold until it passes? Do I choose peace even when nothing is going right?

It’s strange that I’ve found so much inner peace in what can only be described as a high-stress point in my life. I’m turning away from that outside noise and listening to an inner quiet. It’s enough because there’s little else that I can do. It’s enough, because it has to be.

I’ve made choices. I choose to make my life a good one even when the circumstances are not ideal. I choose to create more space for peace and less for drama. I am intuitively shaping my life even if the shape is not what I had planned. I’m learning to do what feels good and what feels right and learning that they are the same thing.

There’s a turning point. It happens when the world feels like it could break us. It’s pressing in from all sides, and we’ll either shatter pressing against it, or we’ll emerge in the diamond-bright clarity of knowing that we cannot be destroyed.

I assumed, for a long time, that I was breaking. I had had enough. Everything that I was managing was just too much. But then, it shifted. Suddenly, my perspective expanded. Or rather, it got smaller. It whittled down to all but what I needed in a singular moment. I didn’t have to solve all the problems or even one problem. I just needed to do the next good and right thing for myself. I needed to find peace wherever it could be found.

So, I got quiet. I let my priorities move to the surface. I stopped living by reflex. Instead of doing what I had always done to cope, I began asking myself what I needed in the specific instance I was experiencing. What would make things better?

It was the only question that truly mattered. It gave me a break from trying to solve every problem or find every solution. It allowed me to go from feeling out of control to experiencing a higher level of self-care. Nothing has changed in my life — and everything has.

It was a bad morning. The kind we don’t like to talk about or dwell on. I came home to a quiet house feeling like my soul had been battered. So, I did what I do now and asked myself what I needed.

I took out my laptop and sat it on the table beside a full mug of coffee I had been too preoccupied to drink. I took a sip and put my hand to the keys. I wrote, On the Days When the World Is Too Much, I Am Finally Enough…

And it was enough.