Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller are on Shelter Island at a bougie party thrown by a hedge-fund billionaire. Vonnegut remarks to Heller that their host made more in a single day than Heller himself had ever earned from his bestselling “Catch-22,” known as one of the greatest novels of all time.
Heller replies, “Yeah, but I have something that he will never have. Enough.”
Of course, the notion of “enough” is completely relative. How much is enough when you’ve lost everything? That’s what happened to my friend Nikki’s sister Jessie and her family a couple of years ago when a fire burned their house to the ground. Thankfully, none of them was home at the time except for their two dogs who were tragically trapped inside.
After the fire, friends and family helped them rebuild their home.
“They were able to re-establish their life relatively quickly in a material sense,” Nikki said. The breeder of one of the dogs they lost even gifted them a new puppy.
But for Jessie and her family, the meaning of “enough” has changed forever.
“It’s how you represent yourself and how you heal and how your children will remember you,” she said. “Enough is when you’re truly happy and possessions mean nothing.”
As someone who spent a good chunk of my 20s and 30s striving for more, more, more, I often felt like it was never enough. I was never enough. There had to be more. I had to be more.
Finally, after 20 years of marriage and career-striving, I had the life I thought I always wanted. I had the perfect job, the dream house, the cool car, the country club, the Chanel shoes. All the things I thought I wanted. The things that were supposed to fill me up. And yet I felt empty.
When my marriage ended a couple of years later, I left the house and the car and the country club behind and moved on my own to Paris for three months. That’s when I realized how little I really needed to be happy. A tiny rental in the 6th arrondisement. A successful freelance writing gig. My first Parisian friend. And all the croissants I could eat.
I wanted for nothing, except an occasional bottle of cheap and delicious grocery store wine. And if I’m being honest, a couple more pairs of Chanel shoes. Maybe some Louboutins.
Eventually, I got rid of almost all of the belongings my husband and I had accumulated over 20 years of marriage — even some heirlooms from my grandma. I figured my memories of her were even more valuable than an old mahogany dresser. Smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, I packed what I could fit into my VW Sportwagen — basically my bikes and skis and shoes — and drove cross country with my cairn terrier Riley to start a new chapter in the Wild West. I had all I needed. I didn’t even have a place to live yet, but still, I had enough. I was enough.
I’m trying to keep all of that in mind right now. I’m about to leave for RAGBRAI, an epic seven-day bike ride across the state of Iowa with me and 30,000 new friends. When you’re only allowed 30 pounds of stuff, how much is enough? How many chamois and bike jerseys, how many T-shirts, how many socks will I need? How many tubes of butt paste? Can I survive without a blow dryer and a flush toilet? Am I really only going to bring flip flops and a pair of ugly bike sandals?
And aside from having enough of the essentials of daily life on the road, will I be enough? Strong enough to ride 60-70 miles per day for a week? Fit enough to climb nearly 20,000 feet in the hilliest route in the history of the ride? Confident enough in my training, my nutrition, my creaky joints?
To all of that, my friend Michele, who’s ridden RAGBRAI five times, said, “Kate, all you need is to slow down and enjoy the ride.”
I have a momentary flash of Steve Martin’s “All I need” scene from the comedy classic “The Jerk.”
“I don’t need anything,” he says as he walks out on his wife, played by Bernadette Peters. “Except this ashtray,” he says, walking by a desk. “And this paddle game. The ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need … and this remote control … and that’s all I need.”
I toss all of my stuff into an old duffel bag and cross my fingers that I didn’t forget something. Without another thought, I take a deep breath and pull the zipper closed. In this moment, I know that I have everything I need. Enough is enough.
Just as I’m about to walk out the door, a pair of cute red clogs catches my eye, and at the last minute, I stuff them in the duffel. Hey, baby needs her shoes.
Kate Sonnick is off riding her bike across Iowa next week. Sadly, her dog and her shoe collection will not be joining her. Send a postcard to kate@katesonnick.com.