When Enough Was Enough
So, this week, stop for a moment and ask yourself:“When is enough actually enough?”You could explore ambition and the price of success. Write about someone who has everything but still wants more, or someone with very little who feels incredibly rich. Explore money, relationships, work, family, time, happiness, ageing, friendship or our endless desire for something just beyond our grasp.Make us laugh. Make us uncomfortable. Make us think. Tell a fictional story, share something personal, write a poem, or take the idea somewhere unexpected. There is no right answer. What feels like enough to one person may feel like far too little to another.
Great Minds Think – The ENOUGH Challenge
When Enough Was Enough
When is enough actually enough?
For me, there was a time when the answer became very simple:
When I could no longer hear myself think.
We spent our first five years in the Canary Islands living in Gran Canaria. We lived in apartments surrounded by holidaymakers coming and going.
For them, it was paradise.
They were on holiday. They wanted music, drinks, laughter and parties late into the night. And why shouldn’t they? They had waited all year for their week or two in the sun.
The problem was that we weren’t on holiday.
We lived there.
We were raising small children and trying to have an ordinary family life in a place where our neighbours were constantly changing and somebody always seemed to be celebrating something.
Night after night came the noise.
Music.
Voices.
Drinking.
Parties.
Then morning arrived, and while our neighbours slept off the night before, we still had children to look after and everyday life to live.
Eventually, I had enough.
I wasn’t only physically tired.
I was mentally exhausted.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from never having enough quiet. You don’t always realise how much it is affecting you until something inside finally says:
I can’t do this anymore.
That was my enough.
Around that time, we heard about another Norwegian family who had moved to Fuerteventura.
We got in touch with them. The woman was Norwegian, her husband Canarii, and their daughter was the same age as our youngest daughter.
They helped us find a house and navigate our new beginning on another island.
What I couldn’t possibly have known then was that the woman helping us would become my best friend. 🧡
We had found somewhere quieter to live.
Now we just had to move there.
Simple, right?
Not quite. 😂
It took six ferry trips to move our lives from Gran Canaria to Fuerteventura.
By the sixth and final trip, our daughters were already safely in Fuerteventura with my friend.
My husband and I were left with the final load.
And what a load it was.
Our Chrysler Voyager was packed with IKEA boxes from top to bottom.
We also had four dogs in four dog cages.
Then there was Oscar, our African land turtle, travelling in his small carrier.
And finally…
two water turtles.
They were travelling in a water container.
On my lap.
Once I was sitting inside that fully loaded Voyager with a container of water and two turtles balanced on me, I wasn’t going anywhere. 😂
At the ferry terminal in Gran Canaria, my husband got out to deal with the dogs and their passport control. Their microchips and vaccination records needed to be checked before we could travel.
I stayed exactly where I was.
Inside the car.
Surrounded by IKEA boxes.
Four dogs nearby.
Oscar somewhere amongst our travelling zoo.
And two water turtles sitting on my lap.
At some point, one of the police officers looked into the car.
He looked at me.
Then he looked at the container.
Then at the turtles.
And he started laughing.
Apparently, in all the animals and passengers he had encountered at the ferry terminal, this was a first.
A woman wedged inside a Chrysler Voyager with two water turtles in a container on her lap. 😂
I couldn’t even get out of the car to properly join in the amusement.
I was effectively part of the luggage.
Eventually, we were waved through and drove aboard the ferry.
Only then could my husband help me out of the car with my aquatic passengers.
So there we were:
Four dogs.
Four dog cages.
Two water turtles.
One African land turtle.
A Chrysler Voyager filled from top to bottom with IKEA boxes.
Two exhausted humans.
And six ferry journeys behind us.
We had decided we wanted a more tranquil life.
Apparently, we needed to create as much chaos as possible on the way there. 😂
But eventually, everyone and everything made it safely to Fuerteventura.
The boxes were unpacked.
The animals settled.
Our family was together again.
And slowly, something inside me changed.
I landed.
Not the ferry.
Me.
The noise inside my head began to quiet.
There was space.
There was silence.
There were landscapes where I could look towards the horizon and simply breathe.
At night, there were stars.
So many stars.
I hadn’t realised how desperately I needed that stillness until I finally had it.
The world constantly tells us that happiness comes from adding more.
More experiences.
More excitement.
More possessions.
More people.
More everything.
But sometimes happiness begins with subtraction.
Less noise.
Less chaos.
Less pressure.
More room to breathe.
Moving didn’t magically make life perfect. No place can do that.
But Fuerteventura gave me something I hadn’t realised I was missing so badly.
Peace.
We spent five years in Gran Canaria.
We have now spent ten years in Fuerteventura.
Fifteen years in the Canary Islands altogether.
Looking back, I realise that saying enough didn’t simply take us away from something.
It led us towards something too.
A quieter home.
A different island.
A friendship that became one of the most important in my life.
A place where our children could grow.
And somewhere I could finally breathe.
So, when is enough actually enough?
Perhaps it’s when having more of something begins to cost you the things you need most.
Sometimes walking away isn’t giving up.
Sometimes it’s choosing peace.
And sometimes it takes six ferry trips, a Chrysler Voyager full of IKEA boxes, four dogs, two water turtles, one African land turtle and a laughing police officer to get there. 😂
But eventually…
you land.
Not the ferry.
You.
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
🌙 Beneath the Northern Stars – My New Album
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