Contentment

Photo:  Our cat Blondie in the trash.

This photo of Blondie was taken last winter.  I'd been grading papers and getting students' portfolios ready for end of term assessment, and I was throwing away unnecessary paperwork as I went along.  Soon, our big male Tom, Blondie crawled into this trash pile and acted very content.

It strikes me that this is an excellent example of what I need to be doing more of in my life.  Finding contentment amid the chaos.  Pretty soon, we all begin to think this is what we want more than anything--contentment.

However, finding contentment, as wonderful as it is, seems be be an impediment to my creating art.  I'm trying to figure out why this is so.

I feel I need some kind of suffering, or at least some kind of tension, in order to be able to create.    Happiness seems not to be very good for my artistic expression.

Fortunately, The Ramayana, an ancient tale from India, assures me that contentment doesn't last long before some force (from my own unconscious or the collective unconscious) comes from the depths to set my life on a new path.

I remember when I was dating my husband we were talking about what we wanted out of life.  I was 16 and he was 20.  We were saying this and that.  He suddenly blurted out, "I just want to be happy!"  And that sounded reasonable.  I used to think that was what I wanted, too.  Bliss.  Eternal happiness. 

I actually thought that was achievable. 

Then as I lived more of my life, I noticed how just when I got everything the way I wanted it, something would blow up in my face.  Life was a constant challenge. 

Once in a while you get to crawl into your little trash can and purr, but you can't do that forever.  And do you really want to?

Now I understand that happiness means nothing without its opposite, without suffering, heartbreak, and all those other "negative" forces. 

Wonder what God does in heaven to sort of shake things up and keep them interesting?  (smile)

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My writing is going well.  I now have culled out 50 decent pages so far from the 150 or more pages I produced during the journey.  Decent means passable, a skeleton of sorts.  I hope to get a full draft of the project finished before classes start again, and then to use the school year to deepen and polish.  Sometimes when I read others' journal entries, I'm amazed at what they produce in such a short time.  Cynthia's travels with her daughter.  Vicky's story about Luigi.  Belfastcowboy's entries about the beach and grammy.  Robin's recent entry about Carol King's Tapestry and her daughter.  A new journaler , Emma of Dallas, who writes about naively participating in cyber sex while wearing a leotard (one of the funniest things I have ever read).  And I lose heart a little, because it takes me so long to produce anything.  Days, weeks, months, years.  But I don't let that feeling last.  I pick myself up and go on.  I keep on keeping on.

I thank everyone for their support and for their comments.  They mean a lot.