We as a culture spend a worrying amount of time chasing after that peculiar form of self-deception known colloquially as "happiness".
Now, that sounds like a deeply depressing sentence, but let's look at it further:
Happiness the emotion, the feeling, is not unobtainable. That's not the point I'm trying to make at all. I'm not saying that happiness is a lie, or that it is impossible to find "true" happiness.
Instead, the problem is the very idea of "true happiness" that has permeated our culture. The media have spread, if not created, the idea that happiness means an idyllic state of absolute carefreedom, with no worries or stresses, where the world itself conspires to keep away anything that might slightly taint your euphoria.
Fun fact: Life doesn't work like that. Those few, "lucky" people who seem to get life handed to them on a silver platter also tend to get a slew of personal issues that very nearly cancel out everything else. Nobody ever has everything the way they want it.
Depressing? It may seem like that, but it really doesn't need to be.
It's true, life is never going to be perfect. But that doesn't mean we can't be happy. Not the - frankly childish - idea of happiness that many people aspire to, but a sort that can actually be acquired, and that is no less special because of it.
Contentment is often used, in various contexts, as though it something less than happiness, a sort of second-best, or a consolation prize in the game of life.
But one definition of "content" - the definition I use - is "happy with the way things are", and to me there is no purer form of happiness. To pretend that everything is perfect is idealistic at best, delusional at worst. But there is something almost Zen-like about looking at the way your life is and accepting all of the ups and downs as simply part of the process.
It takes maturity to be able to say "This isn't perfect, but I'm happy", especially in a world where the movie can't be over until every problem is solved. That maturity takes work, and that's tough. I'm not there yet - it's only very recently that I got a long enough glimpse of contentment to be able to write what I'm writing now - but I'm learning how important it is to work on it.
