By Katia Ibáñez

Enoughness means feeling able to handle any situation in our lives. And by “Able to handle” we mean surviving it in the best way possible. If it took you a leg and survived, you were able. If it took you lots of tears and survived, you were able. Even if it took your leg, both hands and half your hair and still you survived, you were able. And if you were able once, you still are. Maybe you need to make some adjustments, exercise or develop some abilities, and even so, you’re still able.
It seems to me that the prime ability of being able, of being enough, is the ability to ask. Michael Blumenstein used to say that there is no better example of enoughness than asking. He thought this based on the premise that we are bio-social beings, meaning that we are a complex herd and can’t ignore the animal that resides in each and everyone of us. And we all know that a lone wolf dies in the winter, while the pack survives. Same happens with humans, we need each other to survive. There is no better example than a baby.
I don’t know if they all work the same way, I can only talk about mine. When my baby girl is hungry the first thing she does is move a lot, as if she was fuzzy. She closes her fists and makes little sounds as if she was about to cry. If for any reason her petition is not attended, she starts to raise the volume and intensity on those little sounds. Before you know it, she goes from little sounds to crying, and if she doesn’t get her milk with that, she screams and starts a tantrum. Once fed, she calms down. And in two or three hours she feels hungry and we start all over again.
What has caught my attention is that she doesn’t seem to think less of herself when she asks for something she needs. She doesn’t seem to feel guilt, unable or demeaned. If she needed to cry to get food once, she has no problem with crying for food again two hours later. That doesn’t change her self-image. Or it doesn’t seem like it. She has no doubt that she deserves what she needs, and she does whatever she needs to do to obtain it.
What has also been interesting to observe is an increase in her patience, as we pay more attention to her and attend faster to her requests. She seems to endure her needs longer and make more gestures before turning to crying. Now she tries to let us know she’s hungry two or three times, instead of breaking into tears right away. And when she feels insecure for whatever reason, she has no problem on going back to crying after the first or second try.
All of this to reach the main point in this article. In which part of our lives did we change our modus operandi? Why is it so hard to ask when we grow up? I have a theory. When we were young, adults didn’t seem to distinguish between purpose and contribution. We heard them say a lot of times “Don’t cry”, “Don’t scream”, “Stop making a tantrum” and we were almost never (or never) asked what we were expecting as a result of our crying, screaming or tantrum making. Maybe if they’d done it, they would have learned that we were hungry, sleepy or thirsty. And as we were kids, we didn’t understand that they were trying to tell us that the way of asking was wrong, not the asking itself. Maybe if we had understood that, we’d had looked for other ways of asking, instead of learning that asking is bad or that you just shouldn’t do it. Can you relate?
Because of that, I invite you to see past the way that a kid asks for something. I invite you to take a moment, take a deep breath and ask yourself, what does this kid is asking for? Obviously, I’m not saying give the kid everything he wants, maybe you can’t or don’t want to and that is ok, I’m only saying that maybe it can be a different starting point of a conversation.
And for you who are an adult that for whatever reason asking awakes in you any kind of discomfort, for what is worth, let me tell you this: YOU HAVE THE BIRTH RIGHT TO ASK WHATEVER YOU NEED. And if you don’t believe me, let me tell you again, YOU HAVE THE BIRTH RIGHT to ASK WHATEVER YOU NEED.
It might be a good idea to practice every different way of asking that may come up to in every possible context with as many people as possible so you can reconnect with your right to ask and at the same time, figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, what things make you comfortable and which ones doesn’t. What happens if the answer is no? Nothing. You will also survive that.
I wish with all my heart that after reading this you feel a little bit more motivated to ask.
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