Contentment

Contentment is almost considered a dirty word. Contentment is viewed as akin to laziness, settling and giving up. It is seen as unambitious and weak. Its not.

Contentment is a mountain so steep and so treacherous that most never reach its summit. Do a quick Google search for the definition of the word and you will find:

• A virtue to be actively cultivated in order to free the mind from the effects of pleasure and pain
• Characterized by peace of mind
• Neuro-physiological experience of satisfaction and being at ease in one’s situation

So next time you are feeling content, relax & savor the moment. Think about the situation you are in and commit it to memory – it contains the key to your peace of mind. And we all know peace of mind is far harder to achieve than fame, fortune, marriage and status.

My past

Today I walked past my past and it didn’t recognise me. My past had long beautifully straightened hair, wore a business suit and sported a gorgeous leather briefcase. My past is still close to the friends of my youth, has the job I thought I wanted and the man of her dreams. My past is blissfully happy without me.

Have you ever had a ‘Sliding Doors’ moment where it is clear that without even knowing it you had taken a fork in the road? Have you ever wondered what life might have been like, if you had made different decisions?

The truth is that your decisions shaped who you are and who you are shaped your decisions. Had you chosen the other fork you may have been more, or less, happy than you are now. But you wouldn’t be you. Not the you you are today, anyway. You made the best decisions you could with the information and resources available and in the process you created your life.

My past looks like I had expected it to look, it is exactly where I had imagined it would be. I, on the other hand, am very far from where I thought I would be and I am a very different person to the one I thought I would grow up to be. I am glad I took another road to the one my 17 year old self had selected for me. My new road has shaped me.

I walked past my past today, but it didn’t recognise me.

The Dice are Loaded

“Everybody knows the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed; everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost”
–Leonard Cohen

I have been musing recently on the uneven way fate seems to have dealt her cards. Don’t get me wrong; I am a big believer in the power of the human spirit and its ability to triumph in the face of adversity. I subscribe to Sir Winston Churchill’s famous quote “The kite flies highest against the wind.”

But there is always a second side to the coin. The flipside to the power of the human spirit is a heartbreaking lesson. The learning of which, I think, marks real maturity. Sometimes the dice are loaded. Sometimes the good guys loose. Sometimes your hands are tied. Sometimes the outcome is unfair, unjust, uncalled for, unpleasant and sometimes there is nothing you can do to change it.

I am watching 3 such situations unfold in my life and the lives of my near and dear at the moment. The wisdom I glean from the experience is; when you can’t change the facts you can change your mind. In that simple, but not easy, change of perception there is more courage, more grace and more beauty than in a whole life lived unchallenged.

You can’t have your cake…

‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too.’

The women of my family are almost famous for this phrase. It speaks to, in our case, a genetic disposition for becoming a martyr. It is used as an excuse to not have what you want, to not shower yourself with the gifts and indulgences you deserve, just in case.

It implies that having cake and eating it are mutually exclusive. Which is not necessarily true.

Let us first look at what it means to ‘have’ your cake. Do we honestly imagine we can keep a cake indefinitely? Surely not. This old proverb speaks to delayed gratification and wisely using what you have, not of our cake eating habits. Wisely using resources, be they love, time, money or luxuries, is timeless advice. What I find hard to swallow is the assumption that ‘having’ something precludes us from using it. I firmly believe the only real value in something is in its use and in sharing it.

Let me explain. As a child did you have clothes that you were never allowed to wear? The really pretty dresses that you Mum was afraid you would destroy if she let you wear them ‘around the house’? How many times did you wear said dress before you outgrew them?

How about the beautiful toy that was placed on a shelf only ever to be looked at incase a child were to break the toy amidst the joy of playing with it.

Do you own fine china? (Another of my little obsessions). Why do we insist on drinking our tea out of thick, cheap mugs when we have exquisite china tea cups? Isn’t their value the sensation of pressing the china to your lips and the feel of the delicate handle between your fingers?

Why do we use the informal lounge while the formal lounge, with the plush chairs and air-conditioning, only collects dust? The same goes for the expensive jewellery we never wear, the amazing bath salts we are saving and the gourmet condiments that sit on the shelf and are never opened.

Unless an item is truly irreplaceable, (in which case it probably belongs in a museum) enjoy it. Multiply the joy by sharing it with others. Make yourself feel special by knowing the value of the indulgence. You honour the intention of the object when it is used in this way too.

So if you aren’t eating your cake, I would challenge that is isn’t really yours to begin with. And if you don’t share the cake with others, then you are missing out; by sharing something you create more of it and multiply the joy.

**This piece was first published in the Online Magazine Connect2Mums.com.ning.au

A grand vision

A blogger recently said about 20somethings that they are characterised by holding a ‘Grand Vision’ of their lives that both serves to keep us optomistic but also makes it ‘dangerously easy to be underwhelmed at the banality of everyday life.’

I instantly saw the truth of the comment in myself, and a number of my friends. We were raised to know we could have and achieve anything we wanted- and we took it to heart. I clearly remember drawing my dream house that included a cinema (not as grandiose now as it was in grade 5), bowling alley, zoo, a water park, roller coaster, ice skating rink (the epitome of optomistic seeing as I am pathetic at anything that requires balance) and an arcade.

Leaving HighSchool we put together a yearbook which contained, amognst the photos and memories, our aspirations for the future. None of our aspirations were mediocre. Many said ‘to be happy’ but even these were accompanied by ‘own a successful business’ or ‘become a lawyer for the UN’. Some mentioned family and a career as an after-thought, totally naieve to the inherent difficulties.

Not that I’m a big one for blame, but I think the root cause of the banality that underwhelms us is that we were never shown behind the curtain. We knew to reach our ridiculously high goals we would have to work long, work hard and pull leavers. We didn’t know that long meant a decade, hard meant 60 hour weeks and that the leavers require a more than our body weight to shift.

In an effort to shield us from the ‘harsh realities’ of life we were shown the glory and not the guts it takes to attain it. So now we are a generation of optomistic 20somethings that are being blindsided by compiling taxes, doing the laundry, waking up next to the same person every day (even though they are the person of our dreams), nappy changes, beaurocracy, budgets…. and the list goes on.

Perhaps there is a certain value in not seeing the strings that make the puppets dance. We set the bar high – way high – and not knowing the level of resistance we will face, walk and confidently towards our dreams come what may. If we knew how many all-nighters, anxiety attacks and tears it would take we may never have earned the degree, started the company or had the baby. But look at what we would have missed.