When Did "Enough" Become A Dirty Word

Somewhere between my grandfather's generation and mine, we turned "enough" into a four-letter word.

I remember this moment – I was maybe thirty-two, sitting in my apartment that honestly had everything I needed. Good light. Comfortable. Paid for.

And I caught myself thinking: Is this it? 

Not with gratitude, mind you. With disappointment.

Like I'd somehow failed because I wasn't constantly leveling up.

That's when it hit me. We've been sold this idea that contentment is just giving up with better marketing.

Look... I get it. Ambition built civilizations. The hunger for more put humans on the moon, cured diseases, created beauty that takes your breath away. I'm not here to romanticize some mythical past where everyone was blissfully content in their poverty.

That's nonsense.

But we've swung so far the other direction that we can't even say "this is enough" without feeling like we're betraying some unspoken pact with our potential. We've confused "enough" with "settling." We've made sufficiency sound like surrender.

The economy runs on this confusion, by the way.

Think about it – if people actually felt satisfied, if they looked around and said "yeah, I'm good," entire industries would collapse overnight. So we get fed this constant narrative: You deserve more. You should want more. Everyone else has more. More is coming, and you better be ready for it.

And the exhausting part? There's always another level.

Another benchmark.

Another version of yourself you're supposed to be becoming.

It's like running on a treadmill that speeds up every time you find your rhythm.

I've watched people – smart, accomplished people – achieve things they once dreamed about, only to immediately move the goalposts. They hit their target weight and suddenly it's not lean enough. They get the promotion and it's not senior enough. They buy the house and it's not big enough.

The finish line has wheels.

Here's what I've learned, though... knowing when you have enough isn't about lowering your standards. It's about raising your self-awareness. It's about being honest – brutally honest – with yourself about what you actually want versus what you've been conditioned to chase.

Because "enough" isn't a number. It's a feeling.

And you can't feel it if you're always sprinting toward the next thing.

The real question isn't whether you have enough. It's whether you can recognize it when you do. Whether you can pause long enough to actually experience satisfaction before converting it into the next source of hunger.

So when did "enough" become dirty?

Maybe the better question is: when did we stop trusting ourselves to know the answer?