Our society doesn’t want us to be content. We are bombarded, daily, with aspirational videos of how clear our skin could be, how thin our thighs, how glittering our swimming pool with the ocean view over it… all aimed at getting us to spend money on thigh-cream, gym memberships, and oceanside resorts.
There’s no end to the number of corporations which will benefit from your discontent, and there’s always something more perfect. Teeth are naturally a bone color, but now they must be WHITE. A woman’s thighs naturally touch because her femurs angle toward each other, but now someone’s invented “thigh gap” because that’s how dolls look…
I’m riding my bike through a very rich neighborhood, and I’m gawking and admiring, but then I get to wondering: do the people in these massive houses truly enjoy them? Are they getting any use out of that immaculate lawn, or are they afraid to step on it? When was the last time they played bocce or croquet on it?
Perhaps that’s classist of me, they could equally play soccer or football. The point is: I never see anyone outside of those mansions when I drive or bike by, and I think what a sad waste it is, though I suppose I do get to enjoy them, myself, like a painting, what I really want is to strip off my shoes and feel what that grass is like! Is it velvety soft or weirdly stiff? It looks like fabric!
Would I be happier in one of those mansions, or would I stress myself out about not enjoying it enough? If I owned a lavish swimming pool, wouldn’t I fail to use it, much like I don’t play my board games?
Which brings me to the end of my bike ride, back in my house, looking at the bocce set sitting unused by the board game shelf. My grass might not look like high-thread-count velvet, but I could still be rolling clay balls on it.
Here’s a radical idea: It’s okay to be content with what you have.
It can, in fact, be an insult to those with less when you downplay it.
I’ve been the poor kid admiring a rich kid’s toy and getting told, “It’s off-brand,” which only made my envy more pathetic. Yet now I find myself in the rich kid’s shoes, and I have to stop and realize how I sound when I say, “Yes, but I got it second-hand.” Isn’t that really saying, “I invalidate your feelings?”
We are hard-wired to denigrate our own circumstances, constantly. Compliment anyone’s anything and they’ll reply with “oh, but it was on sale” or “It doesn’t work as good as the other model”… we’re afraid of having it good. We want to always have it the worst.
Some of this is the inevitable asymmetry of insight. I see all my own struggles, not yours, and so from my point of view, I’ve always had it rougher. If only I had been born rich, I would have been able to write younger, faster… get an agent…
Look, I had a shitty childhood, but that’s okay, I turned out GREAT. All my needs are met, and many of my wants. For fuck’s sake, I TRAVEL to SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTIONS. And I have three books. I want more, and I wish they were with bigger publishers, more mainstream… but three books is three more than most people have. It’s okay to say “Yes, I paid my dues, but now I’m sitting pretty.”
There’s an audacity to contentment, to admitting you’ve got enough. I feel an instinctive fear saying it out loud, like someone will come and take my porch swing away, or give my share of the pizza to someone else.
I suppose we never stop being the baby howling for limited attention and food.
Be content. Step aside. Let someone else have a turn at having suffered the worst.
“Yes, thank you, I’m proud to own it.”
“Yes, I am having so much success. It is really wonderful.”
This feels a lot like the old advice to just take a compliment. Just take it.
Ugh, how embarrassing.
It isn’t instinctive, and the pleasure it imparts is an uncomfortable one, the pleasure of having paid your taxes or waited your turn at the four way intersection. That’s okay, because I’ve found, at least, that steadily acknowledging one’s comforts neutralizes the acid of jealousy and grievance that eats our hearts. One starts by acting content, and one ends by being content, and the savings in thigh cream alone are worth it.
