The Fear of Not Having Enough

I was at the organic store today...a place that I frequent now only when I can, with no compulsion to buy only organic, or only from that shop anymore. I feel free inside living this way. Free because I saw the wall that I had myself erected about living this way. When I bumped against that wall, I saw that what I had been following was out of a subtle fear of what would happen if I didn’t eat organic food. And when I saw that clearly, I saw that all food was a blessing....that I had more access to more food choices because of my lifestyle than most other people on this planet. It suddenly didn’t make any sense to me to be fanatic about my food choices. Some of them at least. For I cannot in my wildest of dreams imagine foregoing my need to be a vegetarian! So when I saw the number of choices I had with just food, I realised that I had way too more than just ‘enough’. And I was willing to let go of some choices because I was grateful for what I had access to.

So today, I had an interesting experience at the store. We were there pretty early for the first time, and I was hanging around talking to one of the staff and some others there. The veggie bazaar begins at 2pm, not before that. So people were gathering and looking around, keeping their hands off the veggies until 2 o’clock! :) Just before 2pm, when one of the staff brought out the bags that we need to use to pick the veggies, and I was still ambling along to the place, I saw most people taking their positions in front of the rows of veggies....much like soldiers on the battlefield....each one knew exactly what they had to do, exactly what they wanted to pick! I was amused. And it suddenly hit me that they were all perhaps reflecting our collective fear of not having enough. That was the fear which was driving them to stand near the veggies that they most wanted!....too scared that there might not be enough if they stood elsewhere! But I wonder if they realised that they couldn’t possibly stand everywhere and that they had already made a choice of what was it that they really wanted! 

And then a little later, we were standing in the line for the veggies to be weighed and billed. One lady left her bags in the line, told the woman standing behind her that she would be back in a few minutes and disappeared. The woman behind her waited for some minutes, looking out for the lady, and then decided to move ahead as she was nowhere around. Very soon, that lady arrived and was upset that the staff was billing another person, when she had left her bags in the queue.

“I had gone inside to get oil. I had told her and gone. How can you bill someone else?”, she argued.

“Because you had gone off somewhere inside and we didn’t know where you were...”, said the staff, gently.

“You can’t do this. I have been waiting so long. I don’t want to raise my voice,” she threatened.

“Ok, so what do you want me to do?”, the young man asked her, calm and composed.

“II want you to bill this first. I can’t wait. I am already late. I need to go to work”, she replied with a smile breaking into her face.

He obliged. And she walked away. I loved the manner in which he had dealt with the situation and diffused the anger. An irritation and anger that stemmed out of the same fear that ‘I don’t have enough’. A valuable little lesson for me.... A lesson that a pause and connecting with ourselves, brings us back to the state or feeling that we always have enough.

A little later, after I had finished billing the veggies I had picked and went inside the store to pay for it, I saw the same lady talking to another person there. She didn’t seem in a hurry then! She was looking at something and standing there asking a whole lot of questions...and she was still around after I had finished paying up and left! Suddenly, she seemed to have ‘enough’....all the time in the world! 

And I realised how I am that way too. I certainly have a long way to go too. This fear comes up in me so many times also. And all that I can do is to see it, watch it as many times that I can catch it. I still buy veggies for the week and hoard it in my fridge, because I am worried that I may not be able to step out of the house at will. 

What is it about ourselves that makes us feel that we are never enough; that we never have enough, I wonder? Will we ever get out of this survival mentality and learn how to thrive instead in life? I am learning by slowing down when I can. Perhaps that is a good place to start.