Contentment

Contentment is a mental or emotional state of satisfaction maybe drawn from being at ease in one's situation, body and mind. Colloquially speaking, contentment could be a state of having accepted one's situation and is a milder and more tentative form of happiness.— Ali ibn Abi Talib Contentment is a mental or emotional state of satisfaction maybe drawn from being at ease in one's situation, body and mind. Colloquially speaking, contentment could be a state of having accepted one's situation and is a milder and more tentative form of happiness. 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.' Marcus Aurelius wrote 'Live with the gods. And he who does so constantly shows them that his soul is satisfied with what is assigned to them.' Hebrews 13:5 reads 'Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'' Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou once wrote in the 3rd century BCE (hypothetically) 'A gentleman who profoundly penetrates all things and is in harmony with their transformations will be contented with whatever time may bring. He follows the course of nature in whatever situation he may be.' The literature seems to generally agree that contentment is maybe a state ideally reached through being happy with what a person has, as opposed to achieving one's larger ambitions, as Socrates described by probably saying 'He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.' That said, there may be a number of elements of achievement that may make finding a state of personal contentment easier: a strong family unit, a strong local community, and satisfaction of life's basic needs as perhaps expressed in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In general, the more needs in Maslow's hierarchy are achieved, the more easily one might achieve contentment. Many religions have some form of eternal bliss or heaven as their apparent goal, often contrasted with eternal torment or dissatisfaction. The source of all dissatisfaction appears to stem from the ability to compare experiences and then infer that one's state is not ideal. In the Bible, there is an intriguing allegorical account that man's fall from his paradisal state was caused by man eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man's eyes were 'opened' to know the distinction between good and evil (Genesis 3). In other words, when man becomes intellectually developed to distinguish between good and bad, he realizes that is a gap between what he considers good or ideal and what he is experiencing. The perception of this disparity is what creates psychological and physiological tension. In the Tao Te Ching, this development of man from his primal state of consciousness called Tao is similarly expounded in this manner: 'When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality ...'. Morality as we know is the intellectual discernment between good and evil. There is therefore a belief that one can achieve contentment by living 'in the moment,' which represents a way to stop the judgmental process of discriminating between good and bad. However, attempting to live in the moment is difficult because a person's attention is not only distracted by sensory stimuli but also psychological processes that conspire to make them think subconsciously or consciously. This thinking process is always involved with memories; hence, the attempt to stay in the present is a ponderous one given that there is always this subconscious struggle to break away from memories, especially unhappy ones. For this reason, specializations in this pursuit to live in the moment are found in various religious and mystical schools, manifested in forms of meditation and prayer.