Good Enough

Some of us are always looking ahead – for the next step, the next job, the recognition we deserve, the day when our value will be appreciated, our potential realized. This is more than simple longing for greener pastures. This is desire for fulfillment, longing for arrival. Today is never satisfactory. I myself am never fully satisfactory.

Which is why I was so intrigued by a recent conversation I had with someone named G.E.. What did G.E. stand for?

Good enough.

Although I figured that the initials represented something to the contrary, I decided not to push the matter. It’s not every day that you meet someone with such a moniker. Besides, I liked knowing that there was someone like G.E. who was fully filling their own shoes.

“How do you know when you’re good enough?” I asked.

Apparently accustomed to the question, G.E. offered me a long, patient look. It was the sort of visual survey that made you think you might answer your own question and, when you did, the person to whom you had originally posed the question would nod and smile. But I don’t like being treated like someone who knows better than I show and so was having none of the tactic. Name yourself worthy of self-satisfaction and you need to go first. Eventually, G.E. did.

It doesn’t mean I’m satisfied.

Silence still, on my part.

It just means I’m not dissatisfied.

The “dis” had been emphasized, gently, no doubt to help assure that I caught the differentiation. Double negatives, however, can leave me singly uncomfortable. It’s like announcing that an afternoon’s weather is not unpleasant. Why not just say it’s pleasant? Is there any other option?

I don’t see the point of being good enough, I wanted to say. It feels like a compromise, a decision not to try to excel, to improve. Instead I inhaled and posed: “Can you describe what it feels like – to not be dissatisfied?”

Seeking to avoid a direct challenge to my new discussant, I draped my words in a non-confrontational tone. A passer-by who overhead me could have assumed we were considering the ambient temperature.

A tuft of G.E.’s hair lifted gracefully in the breeze. The response seemed to float with that wisp of that browny gray.

It feels like release.

By now it had occurred to me that G.E. was an embodiment of non-attachment, a walking incarnation of non-desire, someone who repudiated suffering through a choice to accept circumstances as they presented themselves. I’ve read about such people. I’ve even aspired to be like them. Unfortunately, I have this mental script that inserts itself in my inner dialogue whenever I attempt to adopt the demeanor of a seemingly carefree spiritual traveler. Our actions are meaningful, this script screams out. The universe depends on our decision-making and efforts. I don’t have to resolve myself to pain, mediocrity, and the status quo. Would not doing so represent capitulation, a lackadaisical resignation to laissez-faire living and existence?

I shifted my gaze above G.E., narrowing my eyes as if something that had been set loose needed to be reconnected. “I choose to fight the good fight,” I said slowly. “I choose to refuse complacency.”

It suddenly occurred to me that G.E. might enjoy playing the role of provocateur, offering different answers for varying situations when asked what the letters G and E stood for. Good enough, for me. It could also be Great Expectations, for you. Or Grand Enthusiasm, for another. Even Galloping Ego.

Do you think we should teach our children to be good enough in this world?

This was not the rejoinder I was expecting. My instinct was to distract, mostly because the question was a bit destabilizing to the mindset I was trying to hold. I exhaled, deciding to let the fullness of the inquiry penetrate. Why was I so resistant to the phrase “good enough”?

A memory arrived. When my oldest daughter was still riding in a car booster seat, she told me, quite emphatically, how it was wrong to aim for perfection in life, whether it be at school, home, or in any pursuit.

“You can’t be perfect,” my daughter declared. “It’s not good to try to be something you can’t be.”

I remember looking at her face in the rear view mirror, seeing the defiance that was set in the angle of her jaw. “We can try to always get better though, can’t we?” I asked.

“You need to be careful,” my little girl replied. “Because you can just get disappointed.”

We teach our children, and we expect each other, to be good. We want to offer sufficient good such that we contribute in a positive way to the world and to its movements. How then did the term ‘good enough’ come to signify an average performance? And what was wrong with that anyway? Besides, there might be another way to use the expression. It could be interpreted as bringing ‘enough good’ to others that I, you, or anyone are part of the overall improvement project we call the earth.

I could feel G.E. watching me. I could also sense the other memory banks of my years spinning in search of examples where doing good, of being good, had definitely been “enough”. And I could almost hear the ache of countless humans on the planet wondering, daily if not more frequently, whether they themselves mattered, whether they personally made a difference, whether their unique lives and existence was meaningful, was, in fact, enough. One thing was wonderfully, unexpectedly clear: most of us, especially me, and most of our experiences, despite our naive desires to the contrary, are extraordinarily, and somewhat magnificently, average.

“We should teach everyone that they are good enough,” I told G.E. “Because that way, together, we can be better.”

The perfect is within the whole, not the individual. The individual just helps make the whole possible. The contribution to the whole is what manifests the possibility of the perfect out of the joy of the sufficiently good.

Ah, the things life has left to teach. Thanks, G.E.! Today, I’m trying to be pretty darn good enough. What a gratifying experience.