THE CONSTANT PRESSURE OF INSUFFICIENCY
What are people afraid of? Death. Loneliness. Dependence. Accountability. One of the fears I’m always fighting to stave off is insufficiency. And I want to explain what makes it so terrifying.
We’ve all come up short at one point in our lives. We wanted to do something, but we didn’t have enough. There wasn’t enough money. Wasn’t enough time. Wasn’t enough willpower. Wasn’t enough knowledge. Wasn’t enough… well, the list goes on. The point is, we needed something. And we didn’t have enough of it. That’s insufficiency. Insufficiency is the feeling of reaching in your wallet and not finding enough change. Insufficiency is realising you’ll disappoint someone by not meeting their expectations on time. Insufficiency is realising because of who you are, and who you are alone, you’ll never achieve some of your dreams. You’ll never make that one person happy. You’ll never escape your name, or your family, or your history. You’ll have something you want or need, and you won’t have it. There’ll be something someone else wants or needs, and you won’t have it. That, right there, is the stained ground from which insufficiency sprouts.
What does insufficiency look like? Most, if not all, of us have felt it. But what is it, actually? For one, I’m not good with people. I can’t communicate well. And that results in me irritating, disappointing, and ruining people. Most of which I didn’t care about, but there were quite a few I did. I’m told I’m being a burden, a hinderance. I’m told I’m not wanted in a stressful situation, and they’d rather be with their real friends. I’m told to come back later because they don’t want their friends to think we’re close. And that sinking, caving, depressive pressure is the crucible in which insufficiency forms. This isn’t the only situation, of course. I don’t have enough time to commit to all my hobbies. My school won’t allow me to take all the subjects I’m interested in. I want to write more but I simply find myself unable to, for whatever reason or another. I want to be stable and helpful to those around me, I want to be able and willing to attain power and achieve my ambitions, I want to be courageous enough to explore the million things I haven’t done, but every time I try to get from where I stand to the point at which I can achieve these goals, I come up short. And that is the crux of insufficiency.
But why? Why do we feel insufficient, when we have so much? The modern day is abundant with resources and opportunities. Where Around the World in Eighty Days was once relevant and inspirational, even such a famous story bows to the power of modern technology – with only a commercial airplane, you can do the same in just under two days. Two and a half if you count stop-overs, since planes need to refuel. We see colours every day that none of our ancestors could possibly have ever caught the scarcest glimpse of two millennia prior. Nuclear reactors produce titanic amounts of power by splitting the atom itself, allowing us to completely power cities, or completely level them. We can do so much. Yet, why is it never enough? Why is it still insufficient? The answer is as ancient as the question. Humanity has always suffered under the curse of insufficiency. We weren’t content with evolution, so we advanced our race on our own. We weren’t content with being the hunter-gatherers we were meant to be, so we farmed, industrialised, and innovated. We weren’t content with our planet, so we burned it down and started looking for a new one. Humanity has an unquenchable, defiant, and immortal human spirit. And that means we won’t back down, but that means we’ll never have enough. It will never suffice. Insufficiency is built into the fundamentals of our existence. We will always want; we will always dream; we will always feel insufficiency.
So, is that all? Is insufficiency governed by predetermination? It’s ironic, how insufficiency itself is insufficient for us. Personally, I think insufficiency is something we have to live with. We acclimatise, desensitise, and cauterise our insufficiencies until we finally feel it’s enough. And then finally, after living long enough to tire of the pulling feeling of human nature, we can finally be at peace with our own insufficiencies.