Contentment happiness or joy? Are they similar, different, connected, interdependent?
First an apology to regular readers for a three-week gap between posts. It’s easy to make excuses, I can provide plenty but that’s all they are, excuses.
The inspiration for today’s post comes from a good friend J who sent me a link to this video:
Mathew McConaughey talking about the elusiveness of happiness and ways we can choose joy and contentment.
Back in the 1970s in Rhodesia, I had an experience that has stuck in my mind for almost 50 years. I wrote about it in this post about the prosperity paradox.
Why do so many of us in the modern world chase after happiness? Often assuming we will find it with the next new toy, experience or situation, only to discover how elusive it really is.
I remember well how the happiness from enjoying my new BMW faded as quickly as the new leather seat smell. It disappeared completely after the first scratch in a supermarket parking lot, it soon became just another set of wheels. A nice set of wheels but an expensive one.
That experience moved me from a fleeting period of happiness to regret and resentment at the cost. Yes, I did feel joy driving the car, it was a really nice vehicle. But the joy evaporated as soon as I got out of the driver’s seat. I never got to contentment.
Do we need a reset to find contentment?
I have had some major upheavals in my life, had to start again from scratch more than once.
Each restart was like pressing a reset button on an electronic device. After the major upheaval that forced me to leave Africa, the fact that I was alive, physically unharmed and safe was far more important than the loss of our farm, our assets and our income.
Contentment at being in a safe place, being grateful for a roof over my head. By a series of miracles enough income to put food on the table and to start putting together basic furniture and appliances for a normal life.
However, that contentment did not last. The joy at being alive and safe gradually gave way to resentment that my position in life had been reduced from farm owner and employer of a large number of employees to farmworker.
That the change in fortune had been due to politics and was illegal added to that resentment.
The next reset for me was a heart attack in 2010 which led to a dramatic change in my working life.
That did lead to contentment that I was still alive and had good prospects for a normal life – but not as a farmworker.
Since then, I have found a degree of contentment and joy that I had not had for many years. Yes, there are still bad days. Days when I have to remind myself that I am far more fortunate than many of my former farming colleagues who are now dead or living in dire financial straits. Many are trying to survive in a Zimbabwe with no electricity 3 or 4 days a week, in the violence and failing economy of South Africa or difficult circumstances in other unfamiliar places.
I do have much to be grateful for and mostly I am content. My joy comes from my morning walks along country roads, my work for our church and cemetery, my sons and grandchildren and my writing and internet marketing.
Conclusion
If we choose to focus on being grateful for what we have and stop trying to chase after happiness, we will find joy in our daily lives, we will reach contentment.
Watch the video, near the end the actor lists the 5 important things in his life. They should be the most important in all our lives.
One way I keep on the right track is each day’s reading from The Daily Stoic, many good reminders in there.
Leave a comment with your thoughts.
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