What is happiness?
At it’s core, it’s a choice. I can choose to be happy. Regardless of my current circumstances, I can choose to be happy, to appreciate experience, and improve at what I’m doing.
So when I don’t feel content, what may be going on?
This also is likely a choice, but I haven’t gone through the process of analyzing it and making sure.
Although I may not have to if I actually believe that agency is something I have and should make full use of. Because I choose to act preemptively and not be acted upon.
However for the sake of exercise, what is contentment?
Philosophically,
Contentment and the pursuit of contentment are possibly a central thread through many philosophical or religious schools across diverse cultures, times and geographies. Siddharta might have said “Health is the most precious gain and contentment the greatest wealth”. John Stuart Mill, centuries later, would write “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
Wikipedia, 22 June 2021
So there are a few interesting nuances there, and a few worth mentioning from earlier in the article.
Contentment may be a “milder and more tentative state of happiness.” Which leads me to the belief it is a choice.
John Stuart Mill’s quote about seeking happiness suggests I may need to consider my desires.
And that may truly be a key.
I watch many around me always looking for the “next best thing” when the thing they have is what they were looking for last month. They express dissatisfaction and I try to point out that they have what they had been chasing.
How do I do the same thing?
I had a nice house on a hill in Utah. We liked it. It fit our needs (and moreso, honestly), but we spent all of 2020 chasing something else. A new place to live. I wanted to be out of debt, we wanted to try the homesteading lifestyle. We remodeled the house and then sold it.
For a tidy profit.
We bought a new place.
Kind of a dump.
I didn’t want to spend all the money we made remodeling that, but we basically did. Now I’m looking for the payoff on this place, even though we haven’t finished it yet (and don’t currently have the money to do so).
I still want to be out of debt, we still want to homestead, but I’d like to do so at a smaller scale.
I don’t need 9 acres. We don’t need 9 acres. We should be able to do everything we want in a smaller space.
We have family here.
That’s good. But it also comes with obligations. And it’s also an easy excuse.
Both get in the way of pursuing my own desires (whether they are needs or wants), and that may be a contributing factor to discontent.
It’s also possible my discontentment is connected to the immense amount of work and my inability to accomplish it all. We have acres of weeds. We have acres of bare ground. All of which needs to be mulched and returned to a better state. I’ve got a task at family’s I’ve been putting off finishing for months, just because they’re ok with it, and just because it’s going to take several blocks of hours of work and their kids limit when I can do it.
Which are all excuses. And I don’t like leaving things unfinished. But it feels like all I do at this point.
Happiness and contentment are choices, but there may be deeper needs surrounding closing loops that I also need to fulfill.