Wanderings

Wandering is what we do; restlessness, part of our nature or at least it's part of mine. And in that hubris sweeping statement, I have found one of my more primary truths, that for me, contentment is impossible.

I used to believe that contentment and complacency, while hanging out in different subtleties of the same semantic neighbourhood, amounted to the same thing. Then I had a heated argument with my then girlfriend's mother about it. Though I hated to lose an argument to her, in that case, it seemed she was right and I did have an erroneous view of the two concepts. Contentment didn't mean an end to striving, just an end to neediness, a satisfaction of one's status anxiety. Complacency, on the other hand, the abdication of active participation in maintaining or growing one's life situation. Two very different ideas. I'm sure if I'd bothered to look it up in a dictionary, her point of view would have been there, writ plain as day with all the weighty authority an Oxford could muster. But I've never been one to play things the easy way. I value self-discovered knowledge above that passed on to me via reading etc, which makes my style of thinking rather intuitive. Regardless, Contentment, it was argued, was a noble thing to strive for in life and completely attainable for those posessing enough humility, industry and self-awareness. It was what she hoped for her daughter and the family her daughter would eventually create. Contentment was part of happiness and completely natural.

Now, however, I find myself having dug and searched and considered for months on end, trying to discover my truer self, looking for happiness and, yes, contentment. Yet I find I remain plagued by all the failings I have ever been afflicted with. I am often late, I remain messy, I fail to communicate regularly with people I care about, and more telling than any of it, I have failed to repeatedly and regularly do the things I've decided would be good for me, things that I know make me happy or that I think would make me happy. Slipping out of my grasp as often as we have cloudy days, consistency remains my greatest bugbear. I just don't seem to be able to do anything consistently besides breath, but that's autonomic (and a good thing too!), so it doesn't really count...

Anyway, the contentment issue is, for me at least, really an extension of this inconsistency in my behaviour. With anything requiring a sustained, repeated activity to come to anything largely not getting done, I find the only things that I can reliably do to make myself happy are things that are one off kinds of things, immediate, instant gratification things. No plan survives contact with the real world, but it would be nice if something resembling some kind of directed activity could be installed in my life. It's not as if I don't want to do the things that I'm not managing to do consistently. I think I do want to do these things, but there is some monkey wrench, a cosmic simian tool getting tossed back and forth in my ambitions like a cat in a cartoon street fight.

This is what is leading me to believe that contentment is impossible, that I'll always be wandering from one idea to the next, unable to create a plan of action that extends beyond three or four days. I suspect that if I was actually able to maintain a schedule of practice with ANYTHING, that I could get really good at it and find it really rewarding. I might even find some kind of contentment. But it's not going to happen. I'm no longer a kid, I'm not even a young adult anymore, and yet consistency still eludes me. I think I'll always strive after it, exploring different possibilities, tracking it like an elusive forest beast, but I don't think I'll ever find it. And I guess the trick with that is I just have to accept what is, live in the here and now and get over not having an ability to relentlessly, pursue a goal over an extended period of time. I've just got to get over not being consistent.

I wonder if I'll manage even that consistently...