Una Palabra Sola Episode 15, bastante
Life is more than a mediocre life in a mediocre routine — there is balance between having dreams, ambition, and routines that support your life. That balance depends on YOU to determine what is “enough”.
bastante: (adv) quite; (adj) enough, sufficient
Synonyms: (adv) suficiente (enough), harto (enough); (adj) suficientemente (sufficiently), amplio (wide, spacious), demasiado (too much)
Antonyms: insuficiente (insufficient), no bastante (not enough), corto (short), escaso (scarce), falto (lacking)
From the Latin “bastar”, to be sufficient; enough
Come back to center: it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to be fluent. You don't have to be this five-star gold medal champion of everything to have a life worth living.
For reflection:
Who determines what “enough” looks like in your life? How does that change per role — in your family, your social life, your work life, and in your hobbies?___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What’s “enough” right now? What’s too much - and can you delegate or delete any of that? What can be “enough” in the future, and how has your version of “bastante” changed over the years?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Where do you see or feel the spin-up, the “must-have-everything-perfect” expectation? Where do you hold the most pride — and is that truly working for you? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Una PS has been a labor of love from the beginning. If you’d like to join our lil’ love fest via the Deseo program, click here to sign up! We all have our own wishes and desires when it comes to language, and with some resources and accountability, I can help make yours come true.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Hola y bienvenidos. Hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sola, where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I'm your host, Megan Miller, founder and teacher at Aprovechar Language Solutions. Empezamos and let's dive in. Hola, hola, otra vez. Welcome back to un episodio de Una Palabra Sola. Welcome back to your newest episode with Una Palabra Sola.
And let me tell you. I was recently talking with a friend of mine and I was saying, ironically, how I wanted to do more podcast episodes. And she was like, oh, is it just, you know, a lot of time editing, or what? What's standing in the way? She doesn't do podcasts, so she doesn't know the amount of work it can take sometimes. So, I started listing out all of these things that I had to do in order to post an episode. I had to write the blog for the show notes. I had to write down the grammar parts. I had to make a T-chart for the verb. I had to do the editing. I had to do the transcript. And then, I saw her face change as I was saying all of this, and I also just stopped myself.
And I was like, look, I don't need to do those things. But I like to. If I'm going to talk about a verb, I would like to show you how to conjugate that. With the transcript, because I get a little... Spanglish, sometimes I like to actually write down the transcript so that if I just start talking in español, uno de esos momentos, and you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, you can go back and be like, oh, that was her Spanish rant.
1:57
I was like, I don't need to do these things. But - the inevitable but- in order to do this podcast, I want to feel good about it, and doing these things helps me feel good about it. And I have to ask myself, like, how much was my own spin up? Because let me be completely honest. No one has ever come to me and is like, Megan, I love your podcast, and I hate that you don't do a transcript. Can you do one? No one has ever done that. No one has ever said like, oh my god, these verbs are so great, but you need to show me how to conjugate them, because I can't go to the seven online dictionaries and do that for myself. No one has ever done that. How much is actually needed? And I know that I have a tendency to make A Thing, capitalized, out of tasks.
Like, building it up and saying, oh my god, it's going to take seven hours; I don't want to start, because once I do, it's hard to stop. I don't have seven hours. I'm never going to do it. And then the day passes, and then the month passes, and then the year passes, and I'm like, ah, fuck. And then you – you, I- have all these feelings about that, and then it just happens again. It's like a cycle of sadness. It's because I don't want to start and then have to stop because it needs to be pretty and perfect and polished and who the fuck cares.
Which brings us, ironically, to our word. Brings us to nuestra palabra, which is bastante. Bastante. It is both an adverb, es un adverbio, and it is an adjetivo, it is an adjective.
As an adverb, it means quite. As an adjective, it means enough, sufficient, or too much. Let's dive into this little grammar part. So, adverbs, that means nothing more than how a verb is done. So, if something is bastante hecho, it means that it is quite done. Meaning, it is done to the point of being enough. Basically, bastante is your word for enough, for sufficient, for quite; and it's also, depending on the speaker and the context, it can also mean too much.
This is the weird part about language, and even some of the online dictionaries and shit that I've seen, it's like, bastante, it's just used, and it depends on region, and speakers, and language is so awesome, and fucky, and isn't that wonderful?
4:52
Because it really does depend on the people that are talking that language. With bastante, it can mean a spectrum of things, right? It's a range of emotions between this is enough, this is sufficient, this is too much. Like, he comido bastante, I've eaten a lot; meaning I've eaten enough, I've eaten too much, now I want to puke, and it depends on the context. If I'm looking like I'm going to puke, or if I'm reaching for Tums, you know that I am on the other side of that spectrum, versus he comido bastante and then I lay down and take a nap. Bastante is really interesting because it straddles your adverb and adjective. As I said before, your adverb, that's just how the verb is done. If someone has eaten a lot, they have drank enough, they have, I don't know, done enough cardio. That “to do”; that “hecho” or “hacer”, that can be bastante. Versus, your adjective. So, your adjective is basically how that noun, so person, place, or thing, has been. So, for example, I can say, hay bastante trabajo para hacer. There is enough work to do. And bastante and trabajo go juntos. I can also say, traigo bastante comida, because I do bring enough / too much food, so that comida and bastante, they go juntos. Versus, if I say, oh, well, ¿Cómo fue la fiesta? How was the party? Because this is a sentence that I say, even though I don't party that much. ¿Cómo fue la fiesta? Ah, bastante bien. Quite well. Or quite good. Meaning, it was a good time. In English, you might say it was a rootin’ tootin’ time, and in Spanish that would be bastante bien.Versus, hiciste bastante. ¡Ya hiciste bastante! And that hacer, hiciste, and bastante, they go juntos. That's, as an adverb, you've done quite enough. Meaning, vete ya, go away already, like, you've done enough here.
7:17
Your etymology, this is from the Latin, and, and I giggled, and then looked it up in a couple different places because I was like, seriously? This is from the Latin bastar, or bastar, if I'm being real American English here, which means to be sufficient and enough. To my knowledge, there's no link between bastar and bastard.
Como adverbio, as an adverb, you can say suficiente or you can also say harto or harta. Harto and harta, that does change based on who is basically having enough, because that's what it means. Like, ah, estoy harta. I'm done. I'm over it. Meaning, I've had enough. Estoy harta con reality TV. Versus, suficiente which is a lot easier because that just means sufficient or enough.
Como adjetivo, as an adjective, this is where it gets a little fucky. Instead of suficiente, you have suficientemente, which is like sufficiently, suficientemente. Or you can have amplio, which is wide, amplio, la calle es amplia, the street is wide, or big. Or, you can have demasiado, or demasiada, which is too much, So once again, favorite scenario, you're at a party, rootin’ tootin’ time, bastante bien.
And you say, hay demasiada comida en esta mesa, cómela ya. There is too much food on this table, eat it already. Cómela. Cómela ya. Eat it already. Usually when we talk about kind of limits, it’s un poco, a little bit, and then you have más, so more, then you have mucho, you have a lot, then you have bastante, and that's almost like your own personal relationship or limit with that thing; like, yeah, I've had enough, suficiente, And then you can have demasiado, and this is where you might be overserved, or you might be to the point where you ate so much you want to puke, or I don't know, you did so much cardio you're going to faint. Whatever that is, that's demasiado. And that's really just your personal relationship with those things.
9:49
Como antonimos, as antonyms, you can have insuficiente. That IN just basically negates that suficiente, so insuficiente, insufficient. You can have no bastante, which I love as an antonym, you just hit no right in front of it, no bastante, no bastante bien; it wasn't really good. You can also have no es suficiente or no son suficientes. Suficiente como adverbio, as an adverb, that does change in number, depending on what that verb is. If your verb is plural, then your suficientes is probably also going to be plural.
On the adjective side, corto, escaso, falto; all of these are also dependent on the noun. If the noun is masculine or feminine, this is going to be corto or corta, escaso or escasa, or falto or falta. A weird thing about corto: so corto is just like short, right? It's just a little bit, almost like a little chupito, almost like a little shot. You can have una falda corta; you can have a short skirt, and some might say that that is not sufficient skirtage. You can also have, I don't know, escasa comida, or comida escasa, which is scarce food. Escaso is just scarce. Falto and falta, this is weird because you also have the verb faltarse. For example, me faltan, I'm missing, uh, me faltan dos números de teléfonos. I'm missing two phone numbers. Or, me falta tu número de teléfono. I'm missing your number. Like, it's missing from me, essentially. As a verb, that is very different than falto or falta as an adjective.
How it's used, I've already said some of this, but like, ya has hecho suficiente, you've done enough, you've done sufficient. Estoy harto, or estoy harta, is like, I've had enough, I'm done, no más. You can also say like, traí suficiente comida, I've brought enough or sufficient food. And really, it just depends on that speaker and the context. This is basically Goldilocks’ worst nightmare, the word bastante, because it can mean too much, just enough, it really depends, as shitty as that is.
12:25
Also, I find that for example, repeating words is really common in Spanish, and sometimes I catch this in English too, like, are you busy-busy, or just busy? Was it loud, loud? Was the club really loud? Really, really loud versus loud, loud? Like, was the club bastante ruidoso? Or just like, había mucho ruido? Was there just a lot of noise? With the repeating words that put the additional emphasis on whatever that thing is, whether it's the adverb or the adjective, quite honestly, similarly to how we started with this pinche podcast; it's easy to get caught up in kind of the go, go, go. And the convenience and the efficiency; I feel like those are just fucking words of the century. All of the processes, and the routines, and the SOPs, and hoops to jump through, and red tape. We have so much language around, quite honestly, what our obstacles are that we can remove ourselves.
This happens a lot in the working world, and being an entrepreneur doesn't mean that it doesn't apply to me. I fall into my own little trap of, oh, I have these twenty things, these twenty tasks, and this is like my SOP that I've created for myself that I only use, and then I tell somebody else about it, and they're just like, but… why are you going through A through Z when you can just take a straight line to Z or Zed?
We create a lot of our own obstacles; the little habits or routines that just kind of come up after time. And this got me thinking, as one might want to do from, like, when we were farmers, and did we actually create our own bullshit then as well? And then we had the Industrial Revolution, and then now we're trying to make ourselves more like machines, and it's about your production, and your efficiency, and hustle, and grind, and all this bullshit, like all this language that we have around it.
14:45
That also then made me think, because spaghetti brain, about Paolo Nutini’s song “Iron Sky”. So, if you don't know Paolo Nutini, he's one of my favorite - sounds Italian, he's not, Scottish- singer-songwriters. And he has a song, “Iron Sky”, and it pulls actually something from a Charlie Chaplin speech.
To those who can hear me, I say do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed. The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress, the hate of men will pass and dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men. (This is the part that I was thinking of.) Machine men, with machine minds, and machine hearts. You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men. (And women.) You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this life a wonderful adventure. Let us use that power, let us all unite.
So, I have no context for any of this other than I like the song and then I thought of the song as I was thinking about bastante and how we are on this line or train or whatever, to this overproduction or producing or thinking of ourselves similar to the machines that we just push buttons at all day.
Really, before our words were super therapized and we thought of people pleasing as only, like, a vice to fix, because we want to do a good job, we want to be conscientious without being a doormat, without finding this mediocre life and this mediocre routine, like, machine men, machine minds, machine hearts.
16:45
Thinking about all of that in that context of bastante, of enough. There's this balance, right, between doing a good job, being a good person, and doing enough. And doing enough, and that balance is recognized and really created by you. Then, I went down this path, you can tell there were some thoughts around here; because who determines what is enough?
I think in the days of yore, it used to be like clergy. People would go to church and they'd be like, okay, I'm doing this. I'm doing this. What else can I do? How else can I lead a good life to get me into heaven? And then we just replaced clergy with thought leaders and wonks and experts and guides and coaches and therapists and everybody else that we look to to say, okay; I'm doing this, and I'm doing that, and what else can I do to be enough? To pass through whatever kind of Heaven-gate, I think that there is?
And quite honestly, what if you were to determine what is enough? Instead of thinking, or following, or being a sheep, or whatever word, verbiage you want to put here. There's a lot of them. You can choose. What if you were to determine what is enough for you? And allowing that to flow and shift and change over time as circumstances change, because life is boring if it's static.
But you determine that level of static-ness, staticicity, if you will, in your life that you want, that you can go for. So, some people will say like, oh, my plate is full, or my plate is as full as I would like it to be, or, no, put more on my plate. We use that analogy a lot. I don't know why. I guess because everyone can visualize a plate.
18:58
If you want to visualize a plate, or an empty field, or whatever; a beer growler: start from scratch. Start from zero. And then slowly add things in. And these things are things that we all deal with. They are the family. They are the animals. They are the travel. They are the things we do because we need to do them. Things we do because we want to do them. They are the health and wellness. They are the schooling. They are the working. How did I get all the way to nine without mentioning working? Ah, machine men, machine minds, machine hearts.
So, when you start from scratch, and then you slowly add things in, when you do that, ask yourself, does this serve me? ¿Me sirve o no? Does this help or support me? And, am I doing this for someone, because of someone, or because I want to? Because, yes, we all don't want to go get our oil changed, or pay taxes, or pay bills, quite honestly. It would be nice if we didn't have to do that, but that is part of life. Life ha these yins and yangs. The things that we want to do and the things that we get to do. And we all get to pay taxes. So, am I doing this for someone, because of someone, because I want to? Am I doing this so that I'm not reckless with my money, with my responsibility, with my time? And really, a big question, do I want to continue doing it?
Is this temporary? I think that we can all do things, for a day, for a night, for a week, for a month, even. Is this a temporary thing? Is it going to change or shift in the future? Okay, I can be the head of the PTA committee for the next six months. And whatever that entails, okay, go for it.
21:04
Or, okay, I can sign up for this program and it'll be three months. Ahem, Deseo. Can I do that? Is this temporary? Do I want to continue it? Do I want to start it? And another thing, how do I feel when it's time to do this thing? When it's time to pay my taxes? When it's time to drop my kids off at school? When it's time to go do my annual physical appointment at the doctor's office? How do I feel when I'm leading up to that thing? And how do I feel when I'm done with it? Because, quite honestly, as someone with... probably ADHD, or at least ADHD-like tendencies or vibes. It is hard for me to start things. So, how do I feel when it's time to do this thing? I know for me, it, it feels usually... there's some guilt, there's some shame, there's some lack of accountability, there's this, oh, I should have done this five hours ago kind of mentality. And I also know that when I'm done it feels fucking awesome. How do I feel when I get up and go to the gym in the morning and the sun isn't out?
Not great, honestly. I'm pretty sure I scare people and frighten them and I may have growled at someone today. But how do I feel when I'm done? That's a great feeling. So, it makes it vale la pena. It makes it worth it. But in order to create that worth it mentality, you have to say, well, what's enough?
What's enough for me? What's enough for me right now? And what feels like enough? How does enough feel? ¿Cómo se siente bastante? How do you feel enough when you do something? Instead of people pleasing and going, well, I have to do this because it makes them really happy.
It makes them happy, but at what cost? You know, this isn't a downloadable thing, this isn't an immediate thing. It works best with a lot of self-reflection, support, mental health professional, therapist, supportive friend, whatever, your D& D crew, whichever. It's not an immediate gratification thing, but when you think of enough, you start to prioritize your own happiness from a to-do list. And that is powerful as fuck. When you feel enough as an adjective, right, suficientemente, as an adjective, you know when you have enough food, when you have enough clothing, when you have enough shelter. When you have enough bills to pay, when you have enough money. As an adjective, you know when you have enough of those things.
24:05
I think the hard part is thinking about it as an adverb. How are you feeling enough? Do you feel like you're enough? And what is enough to you? How does that feel? How is that? And is that a temporary thing or is it a permanent thing? How's your relationship with yourself and your relationship with others? Are you doing enough? Are you being enough? Are you crying enough? Are you working out enough? Are you practicing Spanish enough? Are you... What are you doing enough, right? Are you resting enough?
And if you do want to speak Spanish and have that knowledge, and go from un poco to bastante español, definitely check out my monthly program, Deseo, at deseospanishprogram.info. And as you go through this, I would say definitely have a good meditation or a good self-check-in process. And make sure that you have that support as you are defining what is enough to you at this moment in time. Accepting that that is temporary and that will change and shift is definitely going to be key, because Deseo runs for three months out of, out of the year. I open it twice a year. So, it runs for three months and that's it. Because I know that when you start to create those habits and routines, there's a lot of hills and valleys, and a lot of thoughts and feelings that go into it. And at the end of those three months, it's my job and my hope that you have enough knowledge and self-awareness and guidance to continue that practice on your own.
With that realization that life is about shifting, and it is about agility. It's not static. Things will pop up, other things will end, and you can pick Spanish up when you go. The thing with Deseo is that a lot of the habits and routines and worksheets that we have are there to fill in that foundation.
And then, as life happens, you can pick it up and go with it, and then you can come back. You can always come back to center. Because it doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to be fluent. You don't have to be this five-star gold medal champion of something, or everything. It can be enough. And let yourself be enough. And to find enough resources, también, check out show notes, transcript, or request a word at Aprovechar.me. Con bastante amor, abrazos y deseos para ti, until next time, un abrazo fuerte. Gracias otra vez, and thank you so much for coming along with me on this ride to Una Palabra Sola. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional worksheets and materials. If you have a word that you would like me to review, please feel free to let me know at approvecharlanguagesolutions.com. Hasta la próxima vez, until next time.