Contentment is an emotional state of satisfaction that can be seen as a mental state drawn from being at ease in one’s situation, body and mind. Contentment is a virtue and it is supposed to make us feel happy or satisfied with whatever we have. But how does this impact on our aspirations and dreams? If we are contented with what we have, are we still going to aim for higher heights?
In the early days of human civilization, humans sat on stones, then later on stumps. Then someone felt uncomfortable with sitting on stump and decided to make a stool from the stump, another person felt discontented with stool and made chairs from the stool, and so on till we now have fancy chairs. In between were many people who felt contented with the kind of sits they had and so did nothing. This is just one example. Simply put civilization was built on discontentment and not contentment.
Imagine a tree growing in a desert, its roots search the dry land for water and suddenly one root finds water, does the tree stops its search because it is satisfied? No! Other roots keep heading in different directions just to find other sources of water. Even though the tree is contented with the first breakthrough, the tree understands that to grow, it would need more options and backups. Contentment needs discontentment to sustain growth, even a tree knows that.
I know what we have heard, “to be happy you have to be contented”, but I am also telling you this that “to grow you also have to be discontented”. So is there a way to marry this two? I believe so, it is called “Discontentedly contented” it is an act of being unsatisfied with your satisfaction. You have to understand that what you have now, used to be your prayer point and as such you should be grateful and happy for them but that is not the end. The fact that you are satisfied should not mean the end of your growth.
Being Discontented with what you have is not because you are not happy, satisfied or grateful, it is because you know there is room to grow and a lot more you can be achieve. The role of Discontentedly contented is to ensure you self actualize. Don’t take this for granted, we keep growing till the end, which means if you are still alive contentment is not an option.
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