I don’t think of myself as a particularly ambitious person, but when I try to tell my family and friends that, they laugh at me.
The reality is that I love the idea of being content with the world around me – my work, my home life, my health, my finances, my abilities. But that’s not the reality. Furthermore, my lens is broad enough that my own well being isn’t enough. When I consider global politics, our highly divided country, our health system, and the injustices perpetuated against Black, brown, Native American and LGBTQ Americans and all women every day, I can’t just see that and be still.
So I was interested to read the latest newsletter from Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center today, which is one of my favorite sources of good news. I read a short piece entitled Is Contentment an Underrated Goal in Life?
The piece is based on research with three hundred young adults in the U.S., and it makes the claim that contentment is a unique emotion, distinct from happiness:
What the researchers found is that contentment is distinct from other emotions in certain ways. Generally, content people feel less “activated” (meaning, calmer rather than excited), are more present-tense-oriented, and have less desire to acquire things, in comparison to people feeling other emotions. For researcher Yang Bai, this indicates that contentment is a unique, positive emotion—not just a lesser form of happiness.
They also discovered that content people were also more self-accepting and felt “significantly greater life satisfaction”.
That makes sense to me, because part of what drives me is discontent – wanting the world and my life to be different – and hopefully better. If I were able to let go of that desire for change, I might be at peace. Instead, I want to be a driving force for justice, equity and kindness. As much as I would wish for peace, I don’t think my values and goals will allow that until the world is wildly different than it is today.
I had a blissfully oblivious childhood, running around ten acres like a wild child in bare feet and with tree sap in my hair. But once I came out, I participated in the fight for LGBTQ Civil Rights in Massachusetts. And later, seeing the AIDS Quilt in Seattle for the first time, I knew life was unkind, unfair, unjust for some. I saw a whole generation of LGBTQ men – my contemporaries – leveled by AIDS while our government did nothing, and I didn’t want to be quiet about it.
Painful as it is, I regularly read posts from the The AIDS Memorial on Instagram, so I never lose sight of what we lived through. How to find contentment when surrounded by injustice? I’m not sure it’s possible – at least not for me.
Since the Greater Good study was conducted with young adults, I have to wonder how these differences might vary by generation, because I see more tendencies towards contentment in my kids than in my spouse and me.
What about you – do you feel content? And if not, why not? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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