Contentment

Some vile microscopic organism managed to penetrate my immunilogical fortress this week. I spent thursday flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, plumbing my vocabulary for the right words to describe the particular kind of awful that I was feeling. I couldn’t summon the will to log into work, or mess around on the web, or read, or watch TV, or anything at all.

I’m not used to that kind of sloth. I don’t, generally speaking, get much done on any given day, but I’m usually actively not getting anything done: rushing around, reading blogs, puzzling over the latest bug at work, flipping through magazines. I diligently avoid doing nothing, and now I know why: in the absence of distractions, one has no choice but to think, ponder, navel-gaze, take stock. Which is always a mistake. What’s the use of hurtling thoughtlessly through life if you’re forced to pause every so often and confront everything you’re trying to avoid? That’s the whole point of hurtling, isn’t it? Not allowing yourself to acknowledge what you’re missing?

Anyway, one of the silly topics that my disease-addled mind decided to fixate on was the nature of contentment. Are you content? it asked. If no, why not? If yes, then why do you even need to ask the question? And what is contentment, anyway? What does it buy you? Is it something worth striving for? And why the hell is there a purple antelope in the kitchen? Oh gross! It just barfed up Jean Paul Sartre! Ug — and there’s Camus. Why do antelopes always eat existentialists? They know they can’t digest existentialists!

After the hallucinations settled down, I thought about the question for a while. I’m not unhappy, certainly. In fact, I’m extraordinarily fortunate in just about every way you can be fortunate: I’m married to the perfect woman. I have a job that allows me to mess around with computers all day — essentially getting paid for something I’d be doing anyway. My family is close by, and every day I find reason to love them more than I did the day before. Against all odds, well into my thirties, I still mange to get in a game of D&D every so often.

But there is something missing, and its absence nibbles at me. I think I’m in the same boat now as so many people whose dreams are incompatible with their livelihoods: trying to fit my passions into the shrinking margins of my career. When the job was just 50 hours a week, it seemed at least possible. But now it’s not even that. Not anymore.

So the question is: what next?

Which brings us back to contentment.

There are two kinds of contentment, I think: the kind where everything is on an even keel, where there are no surprises, no unscheduled striving. The kind where you’ve set your course and established the rules, and the maintenance of your happiness consists entirely of following those rules as best you can. Contentment on rails, where the chief virtue, the only prerequisite, is constancy, non-deviance.

And then there’s the other kind: the kind where you have to earn it every day. You follow your desires wherever they lead you, so that every day is a battle you win or lose, and your happiness depends entirely on the outcome. A dangerous course to follow, because it can wear you down, and quickly. What’s the price of banishing the demons? Opening the door to them. Stepping off the rail and wrestling them to the ground. Some days you win, and on those days you go to bed with a clear head, satisfied that you’ve done what you were supposed to have done. But some days you lose, and crawl under the covers bruised and bloody, dreading tomorrow’s battle.

There’s no value judgement here: either kind works, one is just as valid as the other. There’s only the question of what kind of contentment you want. Our culture gives a lot of lip-service to following your dreams, at any cost. You could bury your typical suburban neighborhood under the mountain of books published every year on the subject. But that same culture will absolutely kick you in the ass if the risk doesn’t pan out. You’re not a noble striver, you’re not a defeated visionary: you’re a loser. That’s the risk you take.

It’s a tough call. But one thing is clear: if you’re lucky enough to be in a position where you get to choose your brand of contentment, you must choose. The worst place to be is in the purgatory between the two. There’s nothing for you there.