Contentment as Happiness

We all seek happiness. The question is, what do we seek when we seek happiness? Perhaps we understand what makes us unhappy better than what generates happiness.

It is significant that the word “happy” or “happiness” has the same root as the word “happen,” namely “hap.” And “hap” means fortune or chance or luck. That would seem to render happiness something beyond our control, something left up to God or the gods or fickle fate or predetermined destiny. Happiness would come as a consequence of capricious chance; life would be an unnerving gamble in which some win while others lose. Like Carl Sandburg said: “Life is a gamble, take a chance. Anything can happen in these sweepstakes; around the corner may be prosperity or the worst depression yet. Who knows? Nobody. You pick a number, you take a chance, you shoot the bones.”

While there are many things beyond our control, happiness does not have to be one of them. Happiness should not be left to chance or even to something outside ourselves. Happiness has to happen within us; it begins and ever remains an attitude, a way of seeing life—which life itself cannot determine or deter. It is a way of appreciating whatever comes, even pain. As Kahlil Gibran said: “And could you but keep your hearts in wonder at the daily miracles of life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.” He also said, “Who knows but that the angels envy us our pain.”

Though elusive to grasp or define, I usually recognize happiness in myself and in others when I see it. Synonyms include gladness, joy, contentment, satisfaction, tranquility, and serenity. At different stages in our life’s journey, happiness means different things to us, just as what it is we seek to achieve or attain or maintain changes as we mature. Now, for instance, an important part of what I seek daily is relative painlessness—something that gets ever more important as we age, and as our joints wear out and arthritis makes it presence felt.

At this time in my life, I prefer the term “contentment” to happiness. Contentment is a general satisfaction with one’s life. It means to have finally gotten to that place or position in life where your soul is calm, quieted and peacefully satisfied.

My soul was not always calmed and at peace with life. I well remember the days when I had a yearning passion to achieve, to become, to gain and attain things both spiritual and material. In my early thirties someone I respected asked me point-blank: “Hal, when are you going to arrive? When are you going to ‘make it’?” To my surprise, I didn’t have an answer for him; I had no idea what would finally, fully satisfy me.

Now I do. It is “connection.” Contentment springs from being connected to life and love, to nature, to loved ones, and above all, to God, the hidden ground of our being. Contentment is the quiet dividend for being at one with something or someone that matters.

My wife and I used to spend a couple of months during the winter in central coast, California. Now we live there. Our two sons live in this beautiful part of the country. Sitting on the beach together with family members, watching the sun set slowly on the Pacific Ocean, enjoying our dogs playing with each other and running through the waves, things are as they should be. There is quiet connection, there is contentment.