How we live our days is how we live our lives. The habits, the thoughts, the emotions we bring to our daily living are the ways we color the whole canvas. I’d say collectively, perhaps since March 2020, the colors upon the canvas may have been leaning towards the drabber kind. Perhaps you thought joy and peace have been long out of reach because to choose them would minimize the gravity of the moment. Good adults earn points by being stressed out and pissed off all the time because that’s how we know we’re being good adults (I may have thought that at one time….). Perhaps we all (I) did that in our own time in our own way since we started breathing and then walking here on earth.
Yesterday I posted the list of ways people shared for how they made life feel more like living. Just reading the list lightens, inspires and delights me. Reading about all those things that aren’t within eyesight all the time because I’m so busy focusing on what’s not working, what’s not right, what I don’t have yet. Here’s a little tip: focusing on what’s wrong will create a habit of focusing on what’s wrong. It won’t get solved, it will prove itself over and over again. You look for what’s not working, find it, and then keep doing that very same pattern of seeking out what’s wrong as your guide for how to live until the day you wonder, and what else is there to look at?
The list, man. Look at the list. What’s working, man? Are you looking at what’s working? Why? Because then the possibilty of doing something fun is within reach. Doing something fun actually is a place where we can solve some of the things that aren’t working, like perpetual discontent, man. Contentment isn’t for the best among us. It’s for all of us. Why? Because content people allow for the thought that they could be of service to their neighbor, they can share kindness and love without it breaking the bank. Contentment is not meant to be considered a luxury. It should be considered a baseline, man.
So then I asked, and what else? What else would you love to do in the future? Dear reader, hath you a list like this? A list of things you really want to do/learn/see before the Good Lord calls you home?
I have one. Mine are: travel to India, live abroad, spend more time in cabins, more hot tubs, work retreats and AIRE Roman bath visits, do The Camino de Santiago, hang out in the Florida Keys, Hawaii, get back to triathlons, be a member of a swm club, take dance class, have a band.
Here are the things a group of beautiful people told me they want to do in the future:
Play the drums, go to Africa, master a foreign language, buy an etching press for printmaking, take Anatomy & Physiology with cadaver, go to Iceland, move abroad, kayak rivers, sky dive, snowboard, live in Montana, improve cooking skills, get really good at looping, live in the mountains and ski every day, learn to tap dance, travel the eastern seaboard of the U.S., go to Europe, plant a butterfly garden, a salsa garden, volunteer with animal rescue, paint, play the mountain dulcimer, learn DIY projects with power tools, walk the length of Manhattan, dance lessons, turn my cargo van into a camper van and travel, fall in love, publish a book, write a memoir, grow food, live in a refurbished school bus, travel around the U.S. as a work camper, go overseas, learn ASL and Tai Chi, brush up on French, do a Spanish immersion, buy land, write more long form prose, hike one of the long trails (AT, PCT, CDT), back country hiking, rock climbing, canoe trips, foreign travel.
The beauty of this one life is everywhere. It’s in salsa gardens, camping trips, online classes, the blank page, the simple notion of being alive and getting to participate in the things that can light us up and inspire us to new heights. It’s not frivolous. In my experience, the non-rational joyful fun path has information. Lots and lots of it. And what if it’s exactly the right move? What if the right move is to make things less serious, more delightful, less gripping and more letting go? That’d be cool. Team Contentment is looking for members. They are having open try outs, they think that, with your help, they just might win state this year.
Let’s try it.