I Am Content

This year,  I have experienced contentment for the first time in my life. I’ve been happy. I’ve been enthusiastic and excited. I’ve been in love and peaceful and joyful. But contentment was not among my experiences until this year.

I even looked the word up to make sure this was the right word for what I was experiencing. The dictionary said “content” means “satisfied with what one is or has; not wanting more or anything else.” Yep. That’s it. I have never been satisfied with what I have; I have never not wanted more. But today, I am content.

I run in circles that talk about abundance, and how to get more out of life and following my passion or my bliss or my longing. All of it is fabulous. But contentment, for me, is better.

I had a bit of a hard time with this at first. Contentment was simply off my emotional map. I could talk about it, even pretend that I had it, but when it came, I wasn’t sure how to navigate the experience of it. Does that sound odd? It does to me too. But then I remember how driven I have been in my life.

In the year 2000 I entered into what might be called my “mid-life crisis.” I lost my job that I really liked. Got a new job I didn’t. Divorce. Debt. Addiction. I gave up the first house I ever bought. All of this brought me down to bottom, several times. But I started taking a look at my life.

This wasn’t the first time I had examined my life, but it was the first time I ever did it with some humility. I had learned to play the victim with finesse. I was real good at it because I knew that I was a victim. But I was brought up short one day after a talk with my therapist. I realized that - out of all the things that have happened in my life, out of all the relationships, out of all the times I felt I had been wronged or overlooked - out of all those experiences I was the only common denominator.

This was uncomfortable, but there was something in this idea that felt powerful. As I looked back over my life I saw how I had always been on the hunt. I was always looking for something that I could never quite identify, because any time I got what thought I wanted, it never turned out to be what fulfilled the need. During one period (of about twenty years), I moved (family and all) about that same number of times. I spent money I didn’t have. I never got the recognition at work or in ministry I felt I deserved through all my efforts. I wanted something. My life was consumed with wanting anything until I found it.

I can’t tell what my secret for getting contentment is. I don’t have one, and I’m not sure there is a follow-the-dots kind of secret to getting there. I’m not even sure that contentment is something one “gets.” Like I said before, “content” wasn’t on my emotional map, and I never had the thought, “Contentment! That’s what I want! I’m going to affirm and work my way there.” One day while sitting in my backyard with my wife, Sandora, drinking a cold Bud Light, I looked at her and said, “I am content.” When I said it, I was filled with gratitude for knowing this. I had never put a word to this experience I had been having until now.

For me, contentment is about my soul that I have nurtured and heard, and how my soul fills my heart and mind with love. Before Sandora, I don’t think I knew what love was. With her, it seemed like all these hollow places were being touched and filled. Also, she is an open recipient to the love I extended to her, and that, I found, filled me as well.

I have a new way of being around giving and receiving. For me, giving is an act of surrender, of giving over to the hands of a loving universe what I seem to possess. The receiving part was the big awakening for me. Receiving is not about getting. Getting requires work. Receiving requires grace. If giving is about surrender, then receiving is about allowing.

I’ve worked plenty hard to get what I thought I wanted. But it was not until I gave up the work - the struggle, the effort, the striving - that I could experience allowing. I don’t mean that I have stopped going to work, or to church, or that I just sit around waiting for money to materialize. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a goal, or a vision, or a plan. I just know that contentment is not found through these aspects of living. I still want to do my workshops, my coaching, my ministry. I still want to go camping, and enjoy friends’ company, and cook a nice meal. But I don’t need any of this. My “wanting” has no drivenness in it. It is simple, pure desire that helps me experience more grace, newness and fulfillment. All I do is allow it to occur with no need for it to occur.

I think I began feeling content when I made a decision to stay in the home we now live in. This will be the place Sandora and I live the rest of our lives. It felt very different to make such a decision because wanting to move on to the next thing or the next place was “in my blood.” But I began to settle into it. We started doing things together around the house that made it more comfortable, and pleasant. We cleaned out rooms and the garage, and got rid of a lot of belongings. We have completely changed the look of our backyard. It used to be a square patch of lawn. Now it is becoming a sunny and shady garden sanctuary. We grow our vegetables, and just get so excited when they first pop up out of the ground, and get bigger and bigger, and when we harvest them, and eat them.

Now all of this may sound like a lot of work, and it is. But I do not work to be content anymore. My work is an expression of it, and that is a huge distinction.

Sure, there are days that this contentment seems to evaporate.  I can get caught up in the struggle and toil. I have a way of looking at this that has really helped. The struggle, the anxiety, the upsets - all these are clouds passing through my experience of life. Clouds always move. They are simply blown away. The sun always is there. I don’t have to do anything. And I certainly don’t have to identify with the clouds.

My brother, Douglas, gave me a poem back during the time that I was on my way to the bottom. “The Truelove,” by David Whyte, has been with me all along. It has been a rudder for me in my travels through this life, to this contentment. I offer it to you.

The Truelove

By David Whyte

There is a faith in loving fiercely

the one who is rightfully yours,

especially if you have

waited years and especially

if part of you never believed

you could deserve this

loved and beckoning hand

held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now

and the testaments of loneliness

and what we feel we are

worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides

I remember an old man

who walked every morning

on gray stones

to the shore of baying seals,

who would press his hat

to his chest in the blustering

salt wind and say his prayer

to the turbulent Jesus

hidden in the water,

and I think of the story

of the storm and everyone

waking and seeing

the distant

yet familiar figure

far across the water

calling to them,

and how we are all

preparing for that

abrupt waking,

and that calling,

and that moment

we have to say yes,

except it will

not come so grandly,

so Biblically,

but more subtly

and intimately in the face

of the one you know

you have to love,

so that when

we finally step out of the boat

toward them, we find

everything holds

us, and everything confirms

our courage, and if you wanted

to drown you could,

but you don’t

because finally

after all this struggle

and all these years,

you don’t want to any more,

you’ve simply had enough

of drowning,

and you want to live and you

want to love and you will

walk across any territory

and any darkness,

however fluid and however

dangerous, to take the

one hand you know

belongs in yours.

The House Of Belonging, by David Whyte. 1996, Many Rivers Press.