A Seeker’s Guide To Contentment.
{Photo credit: Tara Caetano}
The word Contentment used to plague me.
Watching others with such little life experience, so few dreams, and no curiosity as they stood before me in a state of pure, blissed out contentment, as I struggled to calm my beating heart long enough to stay in one place.
My seeking personality has always been so desperate to feel every bit of this planet, know everything there was to know, engage with as many people as possible, and stretch my existence to experience everything I possibly could in one lifetime, all for the purpose of feeling just an ounce of that contentment that they so freely expressed.
Yet as I looked on at those who reached contentment so instantaneously with so much less, I cursed my seeking heart and the endless curiosity that seemed to stand in the way of the state of being I so longed for.
My personal standards for contentment, having been set so high, were dependent on completely understanding something that can never quite be understood — Life itself.
As seekers of this world, we strive for a sense of enlightenment, achievement or simply a feeling of completion around a part of ourselves and all that exists around us, that holds no connection to finality at all.
We spend our days looking, and failing, to reach an endpoint that doesn’t exist, because we are yet to accept life’s actual form.
One minute our life’s passion and the answers to life’s questions feel potent with clarity and relief, only to then have everything dissolve into a state of pure confusion, which leaves us feeling fragile, unstable and as though all those hours spent figuring it all out were meaningless.
How could it all turn to shit so quickly? How could what felt so right, now feel so incredibly wrong? How did I go from knowing it all to no fucking idea?
And so the journey of understanding begins once more, and you strive to put all of life’s pieces back together. And the desperate longing for contentment continues to itch at your heart and leave you once again feeling lost and in search of home.
So how does a seeker of this world, one who wants to know it all, see it all and be it all in this glorious life we adore so much, achieve this sense of contentment that they observe in many others around them? How do we become those grateful souls who seem to know, feel and find bliss with so much less?
We surrender to the unknown. We surrender to the one thing that we can always know for sure — that we will never know it all, that there will always be a new direction, a new path, a new truth. There will always be a new door to open and a new struggle to face.
There will always be more, and therein lies the battle.
We must surrender to change as our only constant and, in doing so we are forced to defeat our desire to always seek more. We accept our calling to never stop learning, discovering, and experiencing, and we show gratitude for its great gifts.
We revel in the opportunity to stretch and be stretched, knowing fully well the scope of possibility either way. We choose to dive deeper, because we have been gifted with courage and honored with hope. We choose to ask the questions, because we have been granted curiosity.
We choose to use these great gifts to practice complete, unconditional contentment in who we are, what we think, and how we live. No longer searching outside of us for contentment, but looking within to where it has always been and will always live.
We choose to be content with being a seeker, and acknowledge that we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sometimes you need to lose focus, get dirty and drown yourself in deep levels of frustration and confusion in order to feel that familiar and fond invitation to discover new unfathomable levels of clarity. For that is our job as the seekers of the world. That is our purpose.
That is our passion, and despite where it may lead us, or the pain that it may generate, it will always stand as our greatest source of contentment and joy.
*****
Tara Caetano is a health & lifestyle coach, writer and adventure-seeker with a raging desire to make this life her bitch. A world-wanderer and passionate ocean-child, she serves her Feed Me tribe heart-fueled kicks up the ass to get intimate with their plate and live the lifestyle they have always dreamed of. Dig in on Facebook and Instagram, or get on the love list for a fortnightly buffet of inspiration straight to your inbox.
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