The Joy of Being Content

Getting through life has always been a struggle. No matter what your social status is, there is going to be an amount of difficulties to face. People usually undermine other’s ordeal and ignore the evident fact that “Someone always has it worse.”

Everyone deals with what life throws at them differently. You can relieve stress from a problem you have by playing a certain sport, praying, writing it down, singing or even screaming. From my perspective, the only way to ever bypass any dilemma that I may come across is to live through the words of the great Oprah Winfrey: “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” To me; it’s all about contentment.

Naturally, everyone wants to be pleased with their life. They’re willing to work hard to find the point of satisfaction they deeply yearn for, but the arising problem here is that not everyone knows how to attain it. Almost every person you would encounter is trying to change the nature of his or her life; and that’s completely normal. I applaud every person who desires that but some lose their true identity in their noble quest as they attempt to seek a life that wasn’t planned for them! I’m all for defying the impossible but the mind is rather tricky. It can trigger you into believing that the impossible is easy to accomplish.

The problem with our generation is that we try to find our self-satisfaction within possessing materials. Mainly, it’s the media’s fault and our fault as well for being ignorant enough to go after what the media presents. Media gives us the opportunity to see other lifestyles, usually the rich and famous, and that it affects our youth. To some teenagers, dressing up like their ‘celebrity idol’ isn’t enough, they want to act like them too.

Whether we realize it or not, most of us have grown into materialistic creatures hunting happiness through satisfying our prominent addiction; owning redundant supplies. Not only do we search for contentment through wrong methods, we complain about how we never feel satisfied and never get what we really want.

There’s a fault in the way we handle and believe things, being content doesn’t mean that you have to be a billionaire, on the contrary, the best form of happiness is when you own so little but feel like it’s too much.

Clearly, it can’t be forced. The first step to achieving the emotional desire to be happy occurs with gratitude. Appreciating everyone and everything that’s surrounding you and making sure that they know it; this shifts the person you are completely into a better one. Another step is to simply do good things, and that’s by volunteering and taking the initiative to help the less fortunate and develop the person you currently are into an enhanced version.

There are infinite ways to be satisfied with your life; it can be done spiritually in means of getting a close connection with your God or even by practicing simple acts of kindness! Being content doesn’t necessarily involve a complete perfect life; imperfections are the things that make us more beautiful and worthwhile, they point out our best features and keep us humble. All we need is to have little faith to conquer the sandstorm that is life.