For most of my life, I felt that I didn’t have enough, and I was taught that by a culture that profits greatly on frightening people into feeling as if they need more than they have to be safe and secure. I wanted to be anywhere but where I was doing anything but what I was doing. I did not understand the experience or importance of happiness.

It was a tremendous welcome and liberating shock to me to learn that I already had enough and have enough now. But it took me most of my life to see it.

There are reasons why they teach and preach this way of life. The more fearful we are, especially about the future, the harder we work to live like squirrels, find more nuts, and stash them away for the winter or the winter of our lives. Only we are told to work for other people and money to be safe and have a home.

Our society teaches us that we never have enough; we need more and more, and we don’t realize that there is never enough of what they tell us we need to make us safe. It is most often the fear of the future that keeps us frightened.

We are expected to measure our lives by our ability to get more and more. The houses of the rich get bigger and bigger, the cities get more and more expensive, and the yachts are staggering and gross. There is never enough. It isn’t about what we need but what we are conditioned to want.

No wonder people are terrified of their future in our very greedy and spiritual culture.

Living in fear is a horrible way to make money, but this fear rests in the center of our healthy well-being, security, and future, especially when this fear is pointless and false.

I’m not a Buddhist, but I am reading about some of their practices and finding a lot to consider.

Some match closely to where my life work and meditation have taken me. Some are very new to me.

The Buddhists speak of samtusta, the recognition that we have enough reasons and conditions in our lives to be happy right now, today, without getting a high-paying job, winning a lottery, buying a Tesla, or living in economic slavery to the end of our lives will be safe and protected.

When I think about it, it’s absurd that so many of us work for people who care nothing about us and who will toss us in the street in a flash if their revenues drop even a bit.

People who are content with their lives are minimalized as odd or naive. They are pushed to the very edge of our culture and ignored. You will never see them on the news.

To me, this came to seem like a kind of slavery; I was depressed when I made a lot of money. It did not bring safety and security to me. I don’t want a  machine gun, a yacht, or a million dollars in the bank when I’m too old to spend or enjoy any of it.

I have much less money now and am happier and more fulfilled than ever. In my 76th year, I already have enough. Right now. Today. As often happens, my divorce left me without most of my money. But I am nothing but happier and more fulfilled.

“When we go home to the present moment, ” writes Thich That Hanh, “we view all the conditions of happiness that we have, and we may find that they are more than enough for us to be happy right now. We need to stop running after them because even if we get the object of our desire, we won’t be happy, and we’ll want to run after another.”

I can’t help but fail to see the truth in what the monk wrote.

I was practicing samtusta before I heard the name or grasped the idea.

My biggest problem was that I was living a loveless life and was smothered in anger, resistance, and fear. I wanted things I didn’t have – a different place to live, different work to do,  a different way to live, a different life to life.

It never crossed my mind until I broke down, asked for help, and slowly but steadily realized I had enough right now –  (and yes, I did want a new lens and got it. And it does make me happy.) I don’t need to be a monk to be satisfied.

I’ve realized for the first time that I have everything I need today and now. That is the power of the now. I have love, work that I cherish, a small home that is big enough, and a smaller car that drives me where I want to go. Like Johnny Appleseed with his apples, I travel with my camera draped over my shoulder and am learning to listen to people and to see the world, mesmerized by nature, nourished by love, and lifted up by my modest good deeds.

I have enough. I have more than enough. And that, I have discovered, is freedom.

I don’t want anything that I don’t have. That past is no longer critical, and the future will speak for itself.

I don’t call it samtusta. I call it happiness.