on being enough.

I want to be … but I don’t know if I'm good enough. How many times have these words been uttered in the history of humankind? We’re all born fearless dreamers, cooking up a vision of the life we want to live from the moment we first draw breath, but somewhere along the line we began to doubt ourselves, to question whether we have what it takes to make it inside of us. It's something we all struggle with, myself included, something I battle with in everything I create. I think being a creative almost magnifies the urge to compare, there will always be someone more experienced than you, more motivated, more ‘creative’. An internal battle that I've almost lost too many times to keep count is the one that sees me question whether it's even worth pursuing my creative dreams when there are so many others out there thriving in the way I wish I was. That there’s so many people out there more skilled at things I wish I was skilled at, who will do a better job than I will. It's on these days that I can’t bring myself to pick up my camera, open my laptop or put pen to page. One big wave of ‘what’s the point’ washes over me, drowning me in my sorrows and knocking me off my feet. But it's at times like these when you have to remind yourself that there is a point. It's a fact of life that there will always be people ahead of you, with more experience, with more honed skills. In acknowledging this, in diffusing its power over you, you give yourself the opportunity to give yourself a goddamn break and remember that each and every one of us has a uniqueness that should never be overlooked. Each of us has a different story to tell, a different way of looking at the world, none of which is better or worse than the next. Sure, with time comes experience which in turn can equate to success but it's so important not to see others successes in areas that we ourselves long to succeed in as a reason not to try, as a reason not to put in the time in the first place. Because if your story, creation or contribution to the world helps just one person, that is enough of a reason to keep going, even if that one person is you. We live in a world where doing something solely for yourself is a rarity, a world where success is measured by influence over others, by power we wield in our field, instead of the pleasure and the sense of achievement it bring us on a personal level to have done it. You can start off with the best of intentions, doing it for yourself because it brings you joy, but somewhere along the line the influence of others and what they’re doing becomes too hard to ignore. The comparison and self doubt creeps in and robs us of that joy that led us there in the first place. All the noise of what everyone else is doing, how much they’re doing it and the success they reap from it is like static on a radio, distracting, infuriating, hard to ignore. This pandemic is amplifying this static, our most consistent form of communication with the outside world amidst lockdowns, social distancing and restrictions is through our phones, through social media, a place where all the static and noise is even harder to filter out. We all know deep down that it's just a highlight reel, it's not the full picture and yet it is still so hard to tune it out, to take it for what it really is and remain unaffected by the comparison that it ignites within us. And that’s why it's so important right now more than ever to stay grounded, to turn within and find that faith in ourselves that we found so easily when we were kids, before we knew what it was like to hear that static and struggled to tune it out. We need to come back to ourselves, to be gentle with our souls and remember the joy that can be found when we do things solely for our own sense of purpose, because it makes us feel good. Not because everyone else is doing it, not because we feel we should, but because we WANT to. We have been forced to slow down, to simplify the every day and in that we have been given an opportunity to remember what it is that gets us out of bed in the morning. What keeps us sane when everything else going on in the world makes us uncertain and unsure of what the future holds. So it doesn’t matter if you have all the success in the world in doing your thing or if all it delivers you is that quiet sense of joy that you have done it just for you. Being enough doesn’t matter right now, if this virus has given us one less thing to worry about it’s that. All that matters is that you use this time, this slowing down of the everyday to feed your soul, to remember the things that truly matter to you and to do them for you and you alone. And I hope that when the world returns to normal, whatever normal that may be, that we live our lives with a renewed sense of direction towards the things that give us a sense of purpose, instead the things we feel we should be doing. That we continue to do the things that make us happy, just because we can.