Enough is as Good as a Feast

The name of this journal/blog comes from a quote that I found that simply states that enough is as good as a feast. It seems slightly ironic right now because over the past two months I have become virtually unable to tolerate eating solid foods and so the idea of a feast is comical to me. Victory is eating and keeping 1/2 cup of pureed mashed potatoes or 4 Tablespoons of infant rice cereal mixed with milk or a cup of cream of chicken soup. A table spread out with food right now would be overwhelming and frustrating to me right now, a representation of what has been lost almost overnight and what I am afraid I may never access again. You never realize how many social events and activities center on eating and sharing food until you can not eat. Then I realized that a feast can be so much more than food, it can be symbolic of an abundance of anything we desire in life. "More" is the key word in society today - always pushing for more, driving to achieve more, obtain more, have more, be more. So when you can not keep up with that frantic pace, when you can not get that elusive more, you begin to feel like a failure. But instead of wasting our lives struggling to achieve a "more" that we will never capture (a goal that moves each time we get closer), we can be content with having enough and realize that our enough is as good as any feast. Over the past month I have fallen farther and harder than I would have ever imagined possible, from the significant rapid onset new medical issues to severe depression that led to suicidal plans and 11 horrific days inpatient in a psychiatric hospital. What I can see now is that I am such a perfectionist that I can not be content with anything that I do because it is never "good enough", and I am always a failure in my own eyes. I even consider myself a failure or "less than" others because of the fact that my body is unable to function properly and so I can not keep up with others in the ways that I so desperately would like to be able to. Now I am realizing that being perfect is highly overrated and that enough is better than perfect - it is real, it is human, it is attainable, and it is as good as any splendor created in an illusion of perfection. So now like a phoenix rising from the ashes of my own incineration I am slowly piecing my life back together and learning that as long as I have enough I have everything I need. Now if I could just figure out how to make a feast from potatoes and rice cereal...