How Do We Get to Enough?

Appreciating what we have in a modern life determined to distract us from it

Written by: Michael Tighe, PsyD Student

When we think about where we began as a species, some estimates suggest hunter-gatherer societies spent roughly three hours daily doing what we now consider “work”: gathering food, maintaining shelter, ensuring communal safety, etc. This left a considerable amount of time for meaningful creative activities such as art and toolmaking, all while being continually immersed in their home community known to them since birth.

While we are certainly much less likely to die from a cold or a bad tooth infection today, modern society also seems to require a lot more from each of us to sustainably get our needs met.

We have benefited from extraordinary technological and societal advances, but modern culture has also become increasingly decoupled from many of its tribal, cultural, and religious roots. There is unprecedented freedom in our ability to establish a career from a home office, selling products we can’t touch to customers we’ll never meet, while working alongside colleagues we rarely see in person. But this freedom may also make it more difficult for us to feel grounded and connected to the place where we actually live.

At the same time, we live within an information economy that is increasingly dependent on capturing our attention and influencing what we do. In a culture where recent estimates suggest we encounter thousands of advertisements daily, our increasingly limited free time is filled with messages about how we should spend our time, our money, and our lives. We are consistently distracted, in increasingly attractive ways, toward someone’s content, someone’s article, someone’s product, or some coveted promotion or lifestyle, rather than taking time to tune into ourselves and remain meaningfully connected to what actually fills our cup.

Much of what is presented to us suggests that contentment, fulfillment, and happiness exist somewhere slightly ahead of where we currently are: after the next promotion, at the next level of income, once we buy the right product, take the right trip, or finally arrive at some commercialized version of a life that suggests we’ve “made it.” As though it is only once we reach this place in the future that we can be happy.

Certainly, an exciting career, financial security, a beautiful home, and coveted life experiences all play an important part in building a good life. But as more of our efforts become focused on these individualized pursuits, it may become harder to maintain an awareness of what actually allows us to feel whole and that what we have is enough.

One interesting illustration of this challenge comes from the well-known “Rat Park” experiments conducted by Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander and his colleagues at Simon Fraser University. Earlier addiction research had often studied rats living alone in small laboratory cages. Alexander wondered whether their environment might be influencing what researchers were observing.

Alexander and his colleagues found that when rats were instead housed together in a larger, enriched environment with opportunities to socialize, explore, play, and mate, they consumed substantially less morphine than isolated rats in several of the experiments. Their findings raise an important question: How do our aspirations change depending on how connected and fulfilling our lives already feel?

Anyone who has experienced a genuine sense of community likely recognizes something intuitively important here: it’s easy to lose sight of just how fulfilling, grounding, and meaningful it is to feel like you belong to the place where you live. This is especially so when maintaining that sense of belonging has become increasingly difficult.

Certainly, here in Toronto, rising housing costs, demanding careers, increasingly unstable economic conditions, and the challenge of finding somewhere affordable to raise a family can scatter people who care deeply about one another across neighbourhoods and cities. We might love to live down the street from friends we have known for years, or close to family who can help raise our children, but it can be difficult to prioritize these things when so many other practical considerations must come first.

Even when we do live close to one another, the demands of maintaining stability within a rewarding work life can make it difficult to be present during the mundane moments. It’s that time when we’re not working where we have the opportunity to actually stop and get to know those who live beside us.

New connections with others are often most easily built when we can count on seeing one another continually over an extended period of time. The awkwardness and anxiety associated with letting someone else into your life lessens incrementally over time; this leaves more room for you to know and be known by others. But allowing yourself to be known by others also comes with risk.

We have to risk reaching out and sharing something about ourselves that is actually happening beneath the surface. We might have to admit that we’re struggling, ask for help, tell someone we miss them, or take a leap of faith to reveal something about ourselves without knowing how it will land.

Understandably, this is an emotionally challenging risk to take. Especially challenging if being vulnerable has previously resulted in rejection, criticism, disappointment, embarrassment, or feeling like a burden. We might genuinely want more connection, but that might not stop feelings of anxiety that come when we feel someone gets closer than we’re used to, or feelings of hesitation that come before reaching out for help.

Community is also a slow burn. It is rarely as immediately satisfying as turning on a television show, playing a video game, scrolling through our phone, or buying something we’ve wanted. And it can be difficult to coordinate during the limited time we have after work or on weekends when we’re also trying to maintain our homes, care for our families, and recover from the week.

While it is a slow burn that may not be as immediately satisfying, over time we may find that investing in ourselves and in the lives of those close to us becomes one of the more reliable ways we continually fill our cup. While making friends and building community can become more difficult as we age, the payoff may be well worth the vulnerability that inevitably comes with opening ourselves to others and allowing ourselves to become close with them.

If you find yourself wanting more of this kind of connection but notice something gets in the way when you try to move toward it, it may be worth becoming curious about what happens inside you in those moments. What makes it difficult to reach out? What happens when someone gets close? What feels risky about allowing yourself to be more fully known?

At CMBH, therapy can provide a place to better understand these emotional obstacles. Not simply so you can become “better” at making friends or building community, but so you can have more freedom to move toward the people, relationships, and communities that help your life feel like your own.

And perhaps, somewhere within that, find a little more of what it means to feel that what you have is enough.