Gratitude for Contentment...

eschaden
19 minutes ago
3 min read

Contentment is quieter than happiness and requires less energy to maintain. There is nothing quite like the experience of contentment, it smooths you out and over in a way that almost nothing else can.

Contentment does not contain struggle...although I believe, at least for me, there was struggle in my attempts to get to contentment’s doorway. Contentment is the restful repose that comes after the long hard climb into contentment’s downy nest.

It is evenings on the couch, rain falling, fire blazing, kitten purring, snuggled under billowy and soft blankets.

It is a walk alone after a hard rain.

It is a long hot bath in dim light, the kind that fogs the mirrors and makes you feel exhausted and spent.

It is walking away from your desk and computer at the end of a work day and moving into whatever comes next, knowing you did your best and gave what you needed to.

It is the embrace from someone you love.

It is a long walk in a quiet wood.

Contentment has even been the drifting off to sleep, tangled in the limbs of another after a joyful, loving tumbling together.

Contentment breeds a feeling of safety. Something that I feel is missing a great deal in this world today. We are all chasing happiness and therefore must suffer the not so quiet desperation that happiness seems to demand from us. It seems, to me, we are all, in varying degrees, addicted to more and the pursuit of happiness only seems to make this demand worse.

In contentment there is no chasing but perhaps just a touch of melancholy. A quiet servitude to a diminished emotional state, a choice to not seek but to instead, appreciate what is.

Happiness is great and I am not shitting on happiness as a goal. But I have found that in my pursuit of happiness, I have found happiness’ other companions: fear, loss, bereavement, desperation and longing. And they are not quiet, loving companions, no, they are more dick like in their appearance, at least how they show up in my life.

But contentment comes as a solitary visitor. No room for anyone else to darken your door, contentment brings spaciousness and grounding. And there is just no grasping when it arrives, no need to clutch it close is some sort of desperate attempt to prevent its inevitable leave, no need to get all pumped up about it either. It is kind of like fog in this regard...”it comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. “ Carl Sandburg

Or in my house, it comes on little cat feet, staring into the hearth and then curls up and sleeps a contented slumber and then moves on to attacking something unseen in the kitchen.

I love the quiet countenance that accompanies contentment. It is slowly replacing happiness and all its relatives. Contentment becomes its own reward, whereas happiness always seem to beg for more, an implicit demand that requires a feeling of servitude that is not completely welcome.

Perhaps contentment is what comes with age. No longer having the constitution for all happiness seems to require. Contentment instead, comes in and grants permission to sit still and work on being present. There is no accumulation or seeking in contentment, it just finds you where you are, encompasses the wholeness of your being, and then without warning or issue, moves on, leaving inedible traces of its presence on your soul. There is no desperate feeling when it goes, unlike happiness which has always left me clamoring and grasping for more, contentment, instead, just goes with a quiet and reassuring whisper of its imminent return.

Again, still...