Contentment

# Chapter 152

The contentment of the moment is usually in correlation to how little you compare yourself to others, and how little you focus on what you perceive that you are missing. Thus contentment is difficult and rare for most folks, because the most deadly design on comparison ever developed is used by people all day - Facebook or its simulacrums. I have read that there are thousands of engineers working every day to keep your attention on Facebook and to keep you either dissatisfied or angry. This they have determined to be the best way to keep you on their program and that makes them money. Why in the world we all are addicted to a program designed to keep us all unhappy through constant comparison is really easy to understand - we want to be the person with the best pic, the best meal, the best story, the best . . . instead of just being content.

What we perceive we are missing is fairly nuanced as well. This one is rooted in the stories we tell ourselves about what we deserve or what we think we need. Neither are objectively true. You need far less than you imagine and you deserve nothing. But of course we don’t want to hear that, and so we imagine that new(er) car we need, that sofa we deserve, that big(er) house we need, the expensive restaurant meal we deserve, that RV we need, that relationship we deserve, that boat we need, those positions we deserve, etc, etc. Contentment can’t be found or experienced in any of these things or events or situations described above. Contentment is outside of this stuff and inside of you when you understand that none of these temporary things can determine who you are and why you matter.