Contentment is a gift inside a box. We are all born with the box but we can’t see it. Imagine a 4 inches square jewelry box made of thick, sturdy mahogany* with a latch locking the lid. It doesn’t fit in your pocket, is invisible, and follows you everywhere you go.

There is no key to the box. It opens—and closes—when it feels like it, or when the stars align. When opened, contentment flows into life like maple syrup over blueberry pancakes. It is not explicitly a happy feeling but is the exact opposite of sad and lonely and unseen. The syrupy flow of contentment won’t make you jump over rainbows but will help you see insignificance is normal, and being ordinary is the way to peace. You will feel warm, fuzzy, and complete, knowing there is a place for you in the universe/world/cosmos, and possibly the hereafter.

My Contentment Box first opened for me when I was in the back of dad’s car, and he was saying something nice. He never spoke nice. I stared out the car window watching life pass by, symbolically speaking, without my control or consent. It lasted all of 60 seconds, and I named it a “Grace Period” due to the feeling it left behind. There have been many more Grace Periods.

Through the years I’ve tried to write about contentment, but always after contentment left and typing never opened the waterfall of words powerful enough to explain the phenomenon. When you are content, you do nothing but enjoy it, savor it, and try to make it last.

And be thankful. You’ve allowed yourself to be blessed.

The opening of the Contentment Box struck me as random for most of life. The box’s opening was not analyzed and deconstructed. It often opened when something good happened, and many times appeared when meeting a new “love”, as in The One For Me, the love of a lifetime.  Since I was a normally obsessed, modern American adult, love, loss, career, meaning, politics, and blah blah blah, were distractions diverting energy and attention from understanding. There were more women to meet, better jobs to get, weight to lose, weight to gain, broken bones to heal, and—finally–The Calamities of 2023.

At the age of 74 an understanding was reached. I am not someone special**, and sense the box is in everyone, everywhere. Most people have a mindfulness of the box but disregard it because they have no control over it. It’s better for them to have lost the chance for contentment randomly, than be disappointed by pursuing it. It’s much easier to pursue richness, fame, status, and things.

Rejecting consumerism and false gods may sound hippie-ish or cultish since cults and hippies make it look that way, but contentment does not fit a group. It is personal. And you can’t force the box to open, you can’t unlock it with simple effort and hard work, and no one can give you advice about it.

It’s safe to assume there are humans who have made more of their box than me, maybe they have even learned its secrets and open and close it at will.  Lucky bastages.

For the rest of us, just know the box is with you*** and let it do what it wants.

And imagine everyone else doing the same.****

*Or favorite wood of your choice.

**You would have thought yourself special too, if Grace visited you.

***I really hope this is true. There is no way to know. And yes, animals, too. Maybe.

****Wonderful exercise in what the world could have been instead of what it is.