How Little It Takes to Feel Full
I hadn’t thought about Manuela in years. Then, sitting in a family’s home in a village in Bali, eating eggs with moringa we had just picked from a tree, I remembered her. An afternoon so far from where I grew up had somehow brought me back to a woman from my family’s village in northern Spain.
When I was a child, Manuela seemed ancient to me. I thought she must have been around ninety, although I couldn’t tell you now how old she actually was. She had only a few teeth, and she would balance a bucket of laundry on her head and walk about a mile to the river to wash her clothes and sheets. Then she would carry everything home again.
At one point, my family bought her a simple washboard so she could wash at home. I remember that she cried because she was so grateful.
That memory has stayed somewhere inside me all these years. But I wasn’t thinking about Manuela when I got on the back of my masseuse Nita’s scooter to visit her village. I was going to meet her aunt, a Balinese healer, mostly because I was curious. I had no idea the afternoon would bring back a piece of my childhood.
The ride took more than an hour. As we drove farther from where I live, I saw fewer tourists and Westerners. When we arrived, Nita’s mother welcomed me with lemongrass tea and fruit, and Nita showed me how to open a mangosteen.
Later, we walked through the village with some of the women. They showed me fruit trees, opened a cacao pod, and offered me durian. I politely tried it again, but it’s not a fruit I would choose to eat. I tried putting together a few words in Balinese. We laughed at my little attempts to communicate, and I enjoyed being there with them.
There was a water blessing that afternoon, too, with moments I hadn’t expected. If you’re curious about what happened during the ceremony, I share the experience in more detail in a short episode of The Courage to Be.
🎙️ Listen here.
Afterwards, back at her family’s home, her mother cooked for us, and we sat together and ate. That was the part I kept returning to in my mind.
I felt completely present. I was enjoying the food, the company, and the generosity of being welcomed into someone’s everyday life. It reminded me of visits to people’s homes in Spain, where they would show us what they grew or made and offer us something to eat. So much could be shared through a simple welcome.
Sometimes I think we make happiness very complicated. We see a beautiful dress, a new car, or a bag we’ve had our eye on, and imagine how good we’ll feel when it’s ours. Or we set ourselves a goal and picture the satisfaction of finally reaching it. I understand that. I enjoy beautiful things, and I love having something to work towards.
But that afternoon made me wonder how often I’m looking for the next thing while something I would genuinely enjoy is already happening.
Learning to open a fruit I had never tried before. Sitting down to a meal someone has prepared. Laughing together when we don’t quite have the words. None of those moments required me to accomplish anything before I could enjoy them.
Remembering Manuela brought another layer to that feeling. As a child, I couldn’t have understood all the effort involved in her daily life. I don’t want to turn that effort into a romantic story about living simply. What I remember is how deeply she felt a gesture that made her life a little easier. Something modest to us mattered enormously to her.
I’ve been thinking about that since coming home. About what we notice, what we receive, and how easily we move past something lovely because it seems too ordinary to count.
I’m not sure I need to make a lesson out of every beautiful afternoon. Maybe I can let this one remind me to pay attention when I feel content, before I start thinking about what else I need.
I’d love to hear from you. What ordinary moment has left you feeling surprisingly full lately?
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