Yesterday I wrote a guest post for Ending The Grind. For those of you who missed it, you can read it here.
I talked about lagom…the Swedish word that means a totally, exactly, sufficient amount of enoughness. I feel like it’s a much stronger word than our English ‘enough’. In that post, I used it to describe our retirement plan. Kevin & I asked ourselves, “When is it enough?” and then came up with a concrete number so that we could reach that amount and stop.
It needed to be exact so we wouldn’t keep chasing that elusive and completely unreachable goal of more. More is like movable goal posts, they just keep sliding out of reach, because by the very definition, more is forever unattainable. We knew if we weren’t exact, we’d never stop trying to amass wealth just for the sake of doing it.
Over the weekend, I thought about lagom some more. My girlfriend was visiting. She’s a writer too, so I was commiserating how I can never seem to measure up to this ever-changing goal of what constitutes the right amount of writing for whatever project I’m working on. I figured she’d share her same stories because surely everyone feels this way??
I said, “I wrote and worked on my project and was temporarily pleased, but then I didn’t fit in the bike ride that I had planned.”
She asked me, “What if you’d done the bike ride and not the writing?”
I confessed that I would still be twisting on the same self-made hook.
“And what if you’d done less writing and a little bike ride?”
“Then both things would be insufficiently done.”
And she said, “Hmmmmm.” Mind you, it was a very knowing and I’m-reflecting-this-right-back-at-you-kind-of-hmmmmm.”
And in that reflective moment, where she didn’t say a thing but spoke epic volumes…I finally heard my own BS and I thought, “Hello?!?!”
Isn’t this the same damned thing as working forever and ever for more and more? How will I ever arrive if I don’t suggest that today it was lagom. Today I did enough. Today I will cut myself the same slack as I beg my friends to do for themselves. It’s enough already!
And so my new daily job description looks like this;
Show up for my life. Put forth a good effort. Enjoy the accomplishment of whatever it is I did. And then? Declare lagom.
If you see me muttering as I’m walking down the street? Please be patient with me…I’m probably just repeating my new mantra…lagom, lagom, lagom.
I’m coming to this wonderful post a little late — but catching up on your blog and others… one of those months… But just to say, I appreciate your words. The concept of enoughness has been important to me for a long time, especially in relation to published work, where I need to be firm with myself — It is enough, I say to myself, in terms of the praise, notice, affirmation I may get, because as most of us know, the need for that as (often insecure) writers can be a bottomless pit… But besides giving me a new word to express it, what I really appreciate is your connecting it — as you did in your guest blog — not just to what one has now but also with the notion of setting out goals, being intentional, and when reaching them — enough. It occurs to me that I need to do this in terms of what writing projects I might want to still accomplish, with my age in mind — to articulate that to myself so I will also know when I’m finished. Well, still mulling on that, but big thanks for the insight.
Oh Dora…thanks so much for your feedback. I feel like I have another layer of meaning from your comments. It’s so cool that we can build on each other’s ideas/insights/musings….Thank you.
I think you could have used one more lagom at the end of the story.
Thanks for your input Mr. B 🙂
Hello Colleen!
Your writing is so inspirational. A little lagom is just what it takes, or should be! I try to apply this philosophy in my daily comings and goings but I use the Italian word “Basta!” which also seems stronger than “enough”. Anyway, that is definitely my mantra too! Cheers and thanks again! V
Basta it is! I loved learning and using that perfect Italian word. So nice to ‘see’ you here 🙂 Take care Vivien.
I just found my new mantra. Thanks as always for sharing your process.
Hey Barb,
Glad it resonates with you. It seems to me that you and I are only a little alike 🙂