Contentment

The antidote to seeking and searching, wanting and wishing

“Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.”

— Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher

In our culture, it is not only encouraged but expected of us to strive to be excellent, to attain that status, to achieve great things, to climb the corporate ladder, to out-compete ‘the other guy,’ to beat the opponent. We live in an ambitious — and thus — impatient society. We want the biggest house, the brightest jewelry, the baddest spouse, the better-than-you. We need the smoothest style, the sweetest tastes; we crave the coolest crib, the comfortable summer spot.

And because of this, we’re unsatisfied with what we have, discontent with what we’ve been given — and instead, we want what we don’t have, we want what they have; we want what we haven’t been given, we want to have that type of living.

We might groan-and-gripe about what our boss makes us do, and how he doesn’t compensate us enough, and how unproductive and easily-sidetracked our coworkers can get.

The car we drive to work-and-back — and everywhere else — is starting to rust, takes too long to heat up in the cold, doesn’t connect to our phone via Bluetooth, has too many miles on it, looks stupid.

That house of ours needs its kitchen renovated, some trees cut down, a new bed in the master, a bigger fridge, new wallpaper, a finished basement.

Our husband needs to take better care of things, our sons need to clean-up after themselves, our daughter needs to keep it down in her room, our dog just sheds too much and sleeps everywhere imaginable.

The place we live is too loud, filled with rude people, has little to do on the weekends, has terrible weather, has too many roads with potholes.

The thing with complaints: If you keep looking, they’ll keep coming. It’s a never-ending flow of “What’s wrong?” We have this idea, this dream, these conditions and circumstances that we thirst for. I desire, therefore I am.

Many of these missing pieces are of materialistic preoccupations. In a spiritual-sense, they are “of the Physical.” And this is what we get caught-up on, this is what concerns us so dominantly. Is it fair to ask: Is this what life’s about?

What if:

• the undesirable tasks at work are asked out of us because it’ll make us harder-working?
• the outdated car we have is to hamper us from becoming spoiled-and-picky?
• the unremodeled and less-than-perfect house we live in challenges us to appreciate all that we really have?
• our unconscientious husband, our wild sons, our energetic daughter, and our fuzzy pup require us to procure more patience, tolerance, and understanding?
• the town isn’t pigeon-holed about what it doesn’t have but — rather — is given credit for our favorite breakfast spot, a great movie theater, a number of refreshing parks, and having close friends scattered around? — having a ‘glass half-full mindset.’

With this reframing, our life and its contents are looked at through a different prism. It’s not through a material-first, Epicurean focus but — alternatively — a deeper and more profound perspective.

The lackings, difficulties, struggles, and imperfections are in our lives for a reason and for a purpose — for us to get better, to grow, to improve, to evolve. We can see things as orchestrated to some type of order — rational and therefore respectable. We can have some faith in fate. As the Stoics and Nietzsche would say: Amor Fati.