The Practice of Remembering You Are Enough
The monastery was silent except for the prayer flags that brushed against the stone walls with a soft shushing sound like quiet breathing. The scent of incense lingered in the air.
The old monk leaned towards me across the low wooden table, his palms wrapped around a cracked clay cup. He looked at me, not with judgment, not even with concern, but with something closer to childlike curiosity. A kind of open, weightless wondering.
In the gentlest voice, he asked, “And is that enough?” He leaned a little closer, and whispered, “If you achieve all that, will it be enough?”
Well, I had come here because it wasn’t.
No matter how much I accomplished. No matter how much appreciation came my way. No matter how many milestones I checked off like beads on a rosary. There was still that aching gap, the one no praise could touch.
In the back of my mind, a familiar whisper stirred. “Not quite. Not yet. We’ll get there. It’s not enough… yet.”
I shifted slightly, suddenly aware of how much weight I was carrying, all the unfinished lists, the unspoken doubts, and the quiet need to prove myself. And almost without meaning to, I blurted out, “Maybe once I finish everything I set out to do… maybe then, it will be enough.”
The sides of his eyes crinkled as he smiled, his voice as soft as worn cloth. “Will it?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. It was such a simple question. Too simple, maybe. I never realised how complex I had become.
I felt something tighten in my chest. Not sharp or sudden. Just there, like an old knot pulling in on itself. Quiet and unseen.
I leaned slightly back, sensing a part of me was struggling to remember something. ‘Remember what?’ my mind demanded to know.
As if in answer, the old monk smiled and sipped his tea meditatively.
“What if enough isn’t a finish line?” he said. “What if it’s a kind of remembering?”
I gasped. ‘He said, remembering,’ my mind shouted.
Now I was truly lost. I didn’t know the answer to this question, and I felt the knot inside me tighten even more.
His smile widened, and as he so gracefully placed the cup on the table, it felt as if his meditation had already begun. He closed his eyes, the lines near them softening, and he relaxed into the silence, into Zazen.
I understood, the conversation was over. At least the outer one, the one with words.
A different kind of conversation had begun within me.
“Remembering? Remembering what?” my mind questioned.
I got up and turned to leave, sighing inwardly, thinking he had left me with more questions than answers. Then, suddenly, I stopped as if pulled by some unseen cord. I slowly turned to look at his face.
That peaceful look. That absolute calm. That presence.
I felt something loosen within me.
“What if it’s a kind of remembering?” his voice asked again in my mind. I was startled because even though he was not speaking, the voice was loud enough.
And suddenly, the answer rushed over me like a wave returning to the shore. He was showing me the answer by letting me experience it, not through words, but through being. “This is enough. Now. I Am. And that’s enough.”
And I realised he had answered, somehow without another word spoken.
His silence did.
His presence did.
His peace did. Yes, he did.
A slow, unbidden sigh escaped my lips, like the silent unwinding of a knot. For a brief moment, I thought I saw the edges of his mouth lift into the faintest smile, even though he was deep in meditation. I hesitated, unsure whether I had disturbed the stillness.
And so, without another sound, I turned and walked away… carrying with me a conversation that had no end, only the silent beginning of its unfolding.
I didn’t fully understand it that day. But somewhere between the sigh and the silence, something inside me shifted. His words began to root themselves inside me, not into certainty, but gradually growing into a different kind of knowing.
A knowing that isn’t rushed.
A remembering that doesn’t demand answers.
Over the course of the next few months, I would come to see that-
We are not lost.
We are not late.
We are not lacking.
We are simply caught in a world that forgot how to pause.
A world that taught us to chase more, when what we were really aching for was to remember our enoughness.
Not how to become enough. But how to remember we already are.
The Return- Re-Return and Re-Return
I left the monastery and returned to the hum of daily life. When we leave spaces of stillness, the world rushes back in. The noise, the lists, the endless chasing, the endless reaching…the daily humdrum.
Sometimes it happens so fast, we don’t even notice we have lost ourselves again.
I realised that the real practice wasn’t in the silence I had found in the monastery. It was here, among the emails, the errands, the milestones, the noise. I would have to keep returning. Amidst the noise, returning to Enough.
Keep remembering that I am enough. Even here.
Although that would be difficult, and sometimes even impossible. For, we live in a culture that ties our worth to motion, be it emails answered, goals set, or boxes ticked.
Even rest is gamified- 10-minute meditations, productivity hacks for sleep, mindfulness apps that buzz like alarms. (And yes, I have tried those too.)
But what if the most radical thing you could do today… is nothing?
What if Enough was never a destination, but a remembering we practice, one quiet breath at a time?
The Lie of Almost Enough
There’s a voice the world taught me to trust that says, “Just a little more.”
One more goal, one more milestone, one more affirmation, and then you’ll be enough.
But somehow, the finish line keeps moving. It’s a voice that is always almost satisfied, almost arriving, but always never quite there.
And it took me a long time to see that it wasn’t because I was failing.
It was because the voice itself was fake. It belonged to the noise of the world, not to the truth of my being.
We have been taught to measure our worth in milestones, but even those don’t silence the ache. We’ve all been there. That hollow feeling after a promotion. The quiet dread when a compliment makes us feel seen and exposed. We nod when people say we’ve “done well,” but inside, we whisper, ‘not yet… not quite… almost.’
This is the lie of almost enough. It keeps us chasing. It convinces us that peace is just one more accomplishment away.
But here is a gentle truth that I learned-
The gap between who you are and who you think you should be may not need to be closed. It may need to be held. The practice of being enough isn’t a decision, rather, it is a devotion. A quiet return. Again and again.
Like watching a ripple fade on still water, it requires patience and a willingness to do something utterly unremarkable.
S.T.O.P.
The Quiet Practice – Being Enough in Quiet Ways
Some mornings, I forget. The noise rushes in before I even open my eyes, the hum of unfinished lists already stirring.
But on other mornings, the better ones, I remember.
I let the world wait. I breathe. I let the coffee steam in my hands, let the light brush against my skin, let my breath find me before my inbox does. Breathe when a ping of MS Teams sounds, without responding immediately, because first gathering my presence is crucial to me.
It’s small.
It’s defiant.
It’s enough.
Being enough shows up in the smallest acts of return. To awareness. Again and again.
Not filling every silence with noise.
Saying “I don’t know” without shame.
Laughing at my mistakes before they harden into old stories.
Letting my presence be louder than my résumé.
Sometimes, when the morning is kind, I ask myself-
“Am I improving, or just proving? What would change if I trusted I was already whole?”
Maybe I would stop chasing.
Maybe I would find joy not in arrival, but in just being.
Maybe I would finally hear the quiet voice that was never asking me to be more but only to Be.
And when the answers don’t come easily, when silence stretches out like a question with no reply, I remind myself, “that’s not failure. In fact, that’s the point!”
Stillness isn’t meant to resolve you. It’s meant to reacquaint you with the part of you that was never lost.
Maybe that’s the real work, not perfecting ourselves, but remembering how to simply be.
I’m learning, slowly, stubbornly sometimes, that doing nothing isn’t what I thought it was. It isn’t emptiness.
It is sipping coffee and noticing the warmth of the cup against my skin before my mind invents a dozen tasks.
It is sitting by a window, letting the afternoon light fall across the floor, watching the world go by, and resisting the old urge to narrate it, capture it, explain it to myself.
It is remembering, or maybe, relearning that being alive is not a task to complete.
Perhaps the quietest teachers of enoughness are the ones who do the least, like cats, basking in sunbeams, issuing silent invitations for admiration, receiving it without lifting a paw.
(I live with a few such wise beings myself- cats.
They have never read a single self-help book. They simply exist, bask gloriously in the sun, and demand snacks and belly rubs.)
They say if you want to learn Zen, watch a cat. And I agree. When I miss the monastery, the quiet, the stone walls, the smell of the incense, the stillness, I remind myself that I have Zen masters right here with me. Teaching me, in their soft, unhurried way, that I don’t have to chase stillness at all.
I only have to stop long enough to feel it.
Maybe that is the real monastery, not a place on a map, but a way of meeting the world.
Let Silence Finish Your Sentences
There are days when my quiet feels like a burden, when I feel the need to explain myself, in meetings, in friendships, even to myself.
We often try to explain our quiet, just to prove it isn’t emptiness or inferiority or … not-not-enoughness.
There is a subtle anxiety that arises when we don’t fill in the blanks, when we let a pause hang in conversation or leave a thought unresolved. The world is quick to reward the articulate, the polished, and the ones who have an answer for everything. But enoughness doesn’t need to convince anyone. It can sit beside ambiguity and not attempt to fix it.
There is power in letting your silence stand as a full sentence.
In not editing your softness.
In not defending your peace.
Because often, it is in the spaces we don’t rush to fill that we finally begin to hear ourselves.
There is no medal for the moment you chose peace over performance. But your nervous system remembers.
Replace Self-Improvement with Self-Intimacy
There was a time when every quiet moment felt like an opportunity to “work on myself,” another book to read, another flaw to fix, another goal to chase.
But what if you are not a rough draft waiting for edits? What if you are a being waiting to be known? And most importantly by yourself?
There is a certain fatigue that comes with always trying to become better. The endless cycles of self-optimisation can leave us more disconnected than whole. What if, instead of improving, you simply spent more time with yourself, with kindness, curiosity, and a willingness to accept, even when what you find isn’t flattering?
This is not passivity. It is intimacy. It is saying, “I don’t need to fix myself before I deserve my own love.”
And in that shift, something quiet and sacred begins to open. A sense of belonging to yourself, not because you have finally earned it, but because you always did.
Maybe the breakthrough doesn’t come through effort but through ease.
The Echo That Remains
What is true doesn’t need to shout. It just waits to be remembered.
The world will continue shouting, “Do more, be more, prove more!”
But your worth won’t rise with your title or fall with your failures. It sits beneath all of that, quiet and unchanged. You don’t become enough. You remember you already were.
Before the striving.
Before the noise.
Before the world told you otherwise.
A mountain never asks if it is tall enough. It just stands.
A cherry tree never asks, “Am I bringing you happiness?”
It simply blooms, because blooming is its nature.
And maybe that is our nature too… Not to impress. Not to strive. Just to be, and in Being, to Bloom.
P. S. — This reflection from my ZenStudio was proudly approved by the Feline Wisdom Council I live with, namely, Chief Meowditation Officer and the Lead Purrformance Coach.
(They made no edits, but insisted on sitting atop the keyboard and staring meaningfully into the void.)
Featured Image Artwork by Yuumei | Used with permission | yuumeiart.com
PLEASE NOTE: © Anuja Pathak, Harmonious Interventions, May 2025. All rights reserved. All the content in this article is original and protected under copyright law. Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited.
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