Contentment comes with living a content life. I’ve lived my life, but I've had to fight every step of the way and my life has been far from content. Even if we have contentment, it's something we have to continue to work on. Things can change in a heartbeat.
Contentment comes when you have everything you need – you’re at peace with yourself and at ease with your life. But for us to have contentment we need to come to terms with our experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly. Contentment means looking at the little things without wanting or needing the bigger things and choosing to live in the moment.
It is important not to let jealousy and anger in, because they are major factors of discontentment. Discontentment that you have for long enough, will eventually leave scars on your soul.
Yes, I definitely have a lot of scars on my soul from living so long, with such a great degree of discontentment in my life.
I've had to fight myself, because of what I went through as a child with the mountain of guilt, shame and remorse that I was buried under for so long.
There were only a few times where I felt content and even then it always seemed like there was something missing. It turned out that I was an alcoholic and what was missing was the alcohol, which only made things worse.
I have 16 years of sobriety and still have had to deal with so many other issues that I feel like I can work on. Contentment is really what I want the most out of life and to finally be able to feel comfortable in my own skin for once.
Thanks Randy. I'm so proud of you. It's not easy to walk away from dependence on alcohol once there is that dependence; so 16 years sobriety is an amazing achievement.
I believe contentment for you will come. You know and have the full facts of your life in front of you, past and present. I also believe that once you make a commitment to yourself to move on and be where you want to be without feeling, guilty, remorseful or shame, you will have full contentment.
Having moved on myself, I know it can be done. The decisions you have made have always been as a consequence of other people's decisions. With the right support you will have made different, healthier choices.
That was then, but you can make new more positive choices now and need to.
We all seek an emotional state of satisfaction, quiet and peace but not many of us recognise the need to strive to achieve it. As you say we are all too busy comparing our lives with others, wanting this and that.
I remember a Socrates quote from a philosophy lectures at university: "Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
That pretty much says it all really.
Absolutely true. Given what's going on in the world more of us strive for luxury thinking it'll make us feel better, but in the long term, having luxuries makes us more miserable.
There is another quote that adds to your response:
“The Tragedy of the human condition is that the very things that make us interesting and culturally important and progressively brilliant are our differences; and these are also the principle reasons for our prejudices.” - Bryce Courtenay
I think we must all do better to find contentment within ourselves so that we may have contentment with each other. Through Cerebral Palsy and Autism I have and continue to deal with prejudice.