Thank goodness I didn’t give in a few years back, and I kept on keeping on. After years of journeying through life, trudging along the path towards that spiritual place of Zen, of absolute ease and comfort in my skin, of feeling “enough,” one day it hit me. “I might have to settle for almost getting there.” This revelation was, not surprisingly, in the midst of one of the paths’ many roadblocks and it came at a time where I sincerely didn’t think I could summon the strength to figure out a detour again, as I had so many times in the past.

Having put down booze, and the subsequent numbing agents I’d picked up along the way (all, I know now, classic symptoms of old “stuff” I’d fought to put to rest), I’d spent years working hard at uncovering causes and conditions. I’d focused on understanding why I still couldn’t quite get comfortable in my skin and stay there. Crippling, self doubting thoughts got in the way over and over throughout the course of my life. Time after time I had run away believing that I just wasn’t enough to stay.

From friendships, to careers, to lovers, I’d run from all of it, until my life’s “people, places and things” seemed like nothing more than a slide show of fits and starts. I was trying to get to the root of the root of my choices and eventually started to notice that the only thing that had ever gotten in the way of my dreams and caused me to run was me.

Don’t get me wrong I’d had moments while buried in self help books where I felt “enough,” but they were fleeting. I couldn’t seem to stay in them no matter how hard I tried, so I became resigned to giving up. Waving the white flag seemed inevitable. And in waving, I’d admit defeat over the thoughts in my head, all the bullshit that snuck in to the space between my ears, mentally blocked the route and threatened my path. I had the flag about half way up before a tiny voice rose from somewhere deep within me gently whispering, “Lower it. There is so much more inside of you to be revealed before you give up.”

And so I …ever so slowly and ever so purposefully … did. And while lowering, I acknowledged that I always had “kept on keeping on” and that was good for something.