There’s a question that has been quietly following me around for some time now, and that is, ‘How do we know when our best is good enough?’.

It sounds like a question about what we do. Perhaps it’s really a question about who we believe ourselves to be.

As an artist, I recognise the feeling all the time: there comes a point when you’re creating something, when another hour might improve it. Another layer. Another adjustment. Another tiny correction, that probably no one else will ever notice.

Sometimes those changes matter, but most of the time they don’t. Sometimes I realise I’m no longer adjusting an image, I’m simply trying to outrun the discomfort of calling it finished and letting it be seen.

And I wonder how often we do the same thing in our lives; not because we are striving for excellence, that is no bad thing, but because somewhere along the way we learnt that excellence was the price of acceptance: that if we worked hard enough…loved well enough…got everything right…then perhaps we would finally feel enough.

It is a bargain that many of us make without ever realising it, and it is impossible to keep.

Nature seems blissfully unconcerned by these ideas: no Blackthorn blossom waits for perfect conditions before it flowers, the Hellebore opens whilst the garden still sleeps, and Honesty reveals its silver seedpods only after everything unnecessary has fallen away. None of them strive to become something else, they simply are.

I sometimes think we misunderstand what growth really is. We imagine it as constant improvement; a steady climb towards a perfected version of ourselves. But perhaps growth is not always about adding, perhaps it is equally about releasing; letting go of impossible standards and outgrowing identities that no longer fit.

Accepting that some chapters end before we feel ready and trusting that not every ending needs to be redeemed by immediate success.

The alchemists understood that transformation begins with dissolution. Before anything new can emerge, something familiar must lose its form. It is untidy. Uncertain. Often deeply uncomfortable. We tend to call those periods a failure.
Alchemy views them as a beginning.

Maybe that’s why so many of us struggle to recognise our own worth during times of change. We judge ourselves by outcomes when life is asking us to trust the process.

And maybe that’s why the question refuses to leave me; not because I still don’t know whether my best is good enough, but because I’m beginning to wonder whether that was ever the right question.
Maybe the gentler question is this:
What would change if I believed that I was already enough, even whilst still growing?

I don’t have a complete answer, only this..

That gardens are never finished.
That the most meaningful transformations often happen beneath the surface, long before anyone else can see them.

Today, as I write this, I feel that our lives are no different.
That we shouldn’t allow ourselves to measured by perfection, nor by how much we produce, nor by how gracefully we carry every burden.

Our best is simply the most honest expression of who we are, offered with care, in this particular season of our lives.
Let’s remind ourselves that this has always been enough.