The insidious, serpent-like inner whispering: Not Enough. It sneaks up on me on a quiet summer afternoon. You haven’t done enough. You aren’t doing enough. You will never do enough. It almost had me this time, almost had me giving up and shutting up and going back to sleep. But wake up! – the whisper of “not enough” comes from the culture, not from the soul. It comes from the culture of hierarchy and put-down and smack-down, the culture of never strong enough, never attractive enough, never rich enough, the culture of white supremacy. The progressive version whispers with a different vocabulary – never active enough, never anti-racist enough, never woke enough – but the insidious, soul-crushing effect is similar. Don’t bother trying, it whispers. Give it up. People better than you are doing the real work. But having recognized its voice yet again, I can choose to listen to another voice. Yesterday it was the voice of a friend, suggesting that I simply take another step forward today.