When is enough, enough?

After reading Jennifer Aniston’s piece on Huffington Post last week, it got me thinking:

I’m a 28 year old, married, working and now, expectant mother.

Am I ‘enough’ yet?

For so long now, I’ve felt frustrated with the expectations placed on individuals by society.

Let me give you a quick run down of what I have observed in my own life: When I was single, it was this need to find a partner. When we were engaged, it was ‘When is the wedding? When planning our marriage, we were given more than advice. Now married, ‘When are you having a baby?’- you get the idea.

These expectations and unnecessary questions should be replaced with celebrations of one another’s circumstances and achievements rather than pushing us to be ‘more’ all the time.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past. When I was in my early twenties, I thought it was perfectly acceptable to ask when someone was planning on getting engaged or pregnant. I even rubbed a belly or two without asking first. But I’ve matured since then and, even though it was with genuine interest, I didn’t think about the potential hurt I could have been causing.

As a society, we have too many opinions about other people’s lives. We make too many assumptions and we don’t know who we are affecting in the meantime.  Baby watch has been particularly difficult for me, my favourite was ‘you look pregnant’ when I wasn’t, I cried and began watching what I was eating.

My hubby and I feel like we’ve achieved a lot in our short marriage. We’ve been on a mission trip to India and worked in an orphanage. We’ve travelled for leisure, we’ve bought and renovated our house, we have great jobs and Jonny ran a marathon to raise over $7000 for Jacobs Well. We’re satisfied and that is all that matters. We don’t need to feel that what we have accomplished so far, has not been enough.

And so, can we pause and ask ourselves a few crucial question? Are we honestly asking these personal questions to show love or do we have another agenda?  Are we potentially pulling at some very painful threads on someone else’s already unravelling emotional journey? After all, everyone is facing battles we know anything about, can’t we just be sensitive, show empathy, love and acceptance?

When will it be ‘enough’ to be socially acceptable to those around us? To feel as though we don’t need to constantly be chasing the next big thing in order to satisfy others. And how can we hold our tongue to protect the feelings of the people we care about? We should be letting each other know that just being ourselves is enough.

(And please, when my baby arrives, do not ask me when the next one will be here. I may break and ‘you won’t like me when I’m green’).

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