We don’t have to do anything to experience our enoughness. I visit the ocean almost every day. Often I walk and talk on the phone, catching up with calls. I’ve had this habit for about eight months since we moved to Maine, during which time, my family adjusted to a new home and community, welcomed a baby, and bought a business. On such a talking-walk by the sea, a friend commented on how living by the water has been such a powerful resource for me during this time of transition, and it stopped me in my tracks.

Even without chanting OM into the wind, I receive sufficiency. My just being in the presence of the ocean has allowed me to source that knowing all is well, just as things are, even in my exhausted, sometimes overwhelmed, state. I could have been worried, angry, resentful, mean … but I wasn’t. All these months, I have been joyful, grateful, connecting with community, loving. Nature – in all its forms – is one of the Tools of Sufficiency. Now I know why, viscerally.

Sufficiency is in the receiving. My friend said, “You know, the waves just wash the worry away.” They do. The waves just keep coming. The tides keep changing. The ocean keeps doing its work of moving and growing living beings. And I, simply by bearing witness, by walking along its shores, receive the bounty of its offering. I am not even sure why or how, and I am not drawn to investigating too deeply. It’s effect is enough. Unconsciously I have been tracking the tides, the levels and curves of sand, the patterns of rock the waves cast, the way storms churn and the occasional placid lake that forms in a moment of calm. I rarely sit and meditate, or do yoga, or write. I do sometimes, but mostly, I just go there, I just visit.

There is no should in sufficiency. The tagline for Maine is: The Way Life Should Be, and though I love this, The Way Life Is is more what I mean here. Sufficiency is just the way things actually are. We don’t have to win it, demand it, fight for it, hope for it, or pray for it. It exists already. And how I feel when standing, walking, talking, doing nothing at all, in the presence of a great body of water proves it.