A Contented Life

Some mornings I wake to a heaviness, a kind of weather system that settles over me, muting everything except the reality of its unwelcome presence. It can feel as though joy or contentment has slipped away. And yet, I remind myself: just because I cannot reach that place of ease in the moment does not mean it has disappeared. A contented life does not vanish—it simply waits beyond the passing front.

Like weather, moods shift and move on, often without our consent and sometimes without our noticing. Warm and cold fronts, gentle breezes and sudden hurricanes, each passes through, reshaping the sky of our lives. Here in North Carolina, we know what it is to wait out storms. Contentment, too, abides on the far side of whatever clouds may be rising from the Gulf.

The real practice, perhaps, is to suspend judgment when the storms emerge. So many of our harshest self-criticisms and conditioned responses are born when we are disoriented in the fog or rushing for cover in the rain. We scramble for answers, as though any response might keep a tornado from tearing through our plans again. But no storm—however fierce—lasts forever.

The truth of impermanence assures us of this. The saints and mystics knew it well, and so does the quiet wisdom of the heart. Beneath the turbulence, something steady remains: the possibility of beginning again, of trusting that even our disappointments and false starts are woven into the larger fabric of becoming.

So I breathe and wait. The weather will turn. And when the skies clear, I see that contentment has been here all along—patient, enduring, and ready to shine through.