To Be Content in Any Situation

To be content in any situation. Perhaps not merely content, but even happy. It doesn't seem so unthinkable anymore. It seems possible. I used to think that "to die in the cold in the arms of a nightmare" was the cruel truth, acknowledging it the tragic yet true perspective. I made no distinction between the facts of existence and the emotions I thought they implied. To me, they were a package. If loss is inevitable, sadness inevitably accompanies it. 

I maybe am being overly optimistic here. It could be that there are circumstances so extreme, contentment, let alone happiness, is simply not possible. The best one can hope for is a muting of distress.

I have three things to say to that. 

The first is that I'll take it. A softening or cushioning of negative emotional responses in extreme circumstances is no bad thing for not being the optimum. The perfect doesn't need to kill the good. 

The second is that whatever happens in extreme circumstances need not destroy the much more accessible, life changing possibilities for contentment, peace, and happiness in less extreme circumstances. Everyone's life has constraints, even the best lives. To rise to a better position in life is often simply to trade one set of constraints for a different set. The newer set of constraints maybe more desirable than the ones left behind. But, as Viktor Frankl said, suffering is like a gas: it fills up whatever available volume there is. Thus do the new constraints eventually come to seem as grievous as the previous ones. Or, when a better set of life circumstances is achieved, a further set of even better circumstances appears on the horizon, and so on, the desired thing being ever out of reach. Therefore, contentment isn't usually derived from external things. It arises from within oneself, or it doesn't arise at all.  

The third is cautionary. These are glimmers of possibility for oneself. For me. I don't mean to set up a new standard or judgmentalism under which to convict other people for failing to live up to. I especially don't mean to hand over defenses, excuses, or justifications to abusers, bullies, or tormentors of any kind. My adoption of a hope for myself does not bring into existence a corresponding duty on other people to adopt the same hope. I have a single mission in life: To bring joy to others. 

Here is Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, Book VIII, Section XLIII:

Take me and throw me where thou wilt: I am indifferent. For there also I shall have that spirit which is within me propitious; that is well pleased and fully contented both in that constant disposition, and with those particular actions, which to its own proper constitution are suitable and agreeable. 

Amazing. I hope I can do it. 

(I'm not sure the picture exactly matches the topic of this post. But it's drenched with sun, so maybe it does. I took it a couple of months ago near where I live.)