Location Taken: Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010
If you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of meditation and similar calming techniques. My goal in life isn’t to be happy, it’s to be content with everything.
Contentness is a lot easier to maintain than happiness. Happiness usually requires an escalating spiral of growth and discovery, while contentness can stay at one level the whole time. When the spiral collapses, when things go wrong, as they always seem to do at some point, happy people fall far faster and further than content ones. The highs of a content life may not be as soaring as the happy life, but it weathers the lows far far smoother.
It also leads you to appreciate the everyday things, from a good cup of tea to a lovely view to even things like counting how many people on your bus are staring at their phone. I’m not constantly striving to create a better life for myself, I find the one I’m currently living interesting enough for my tastes. It’s not perfect, and there’s still enough things I want out there that I do have goals, but I am still content just about all the time.
There is one downside to the content life. It tends to be pretty boring to talk about. Few people want to hear about how long you played with your dog, or that you read three chapters in that one book, or that you tried a good cheese the other day. Everyday joys are, well, everyday. They do not excite the soul the same way the grand dreams do.
But for me, for now, I delight in the everyday.
