Contentment If we can’t even describe happiness accurately, we really have a hard time with contentment. It sounds like you’ve retired and are smiling benignly in your incontinence pants. It sounds like that, but it isn’t. The problem is we have to learn to feel contentment. I know that when I’ve done something for someone else without expecting anything in return I get a warm, syrupy feeling in my veins. That’s how I would describe how contentment feels, but it only works if you do your altruistic act in private, and don’t shout it out from the treetops. If I announce, ‘Hey, everyone, I helped save a puffin,’ it wouldn’t feel as good as secretly saving a puffin … (I might be losing my thread here …) I think my aim in life is to try for that state when you’re not too high or too low, to just be able to balance on the surfboard. ‘You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf’ – I read that on a Tshirt. This brings me back to why I practise mindfulness each and every day: to stay on that surfboard

Contentment If we can’t even describe happiness accurately, we really have a hard time with contentment. It sounds like you’ve retired and are smiling benignly in your incontinence pants. It sounds like that, but it isn’t. The problem is we have to learn to feel contentment. I know that when I’ve done something for someone else without expecting anything in return I get a warm, syrupy feeling in my veins. That’s how I would describe how contentment feels, but it only works if you do your altruistic act in private, and don’t shout it out from the treetops. If I announce, ‘Hey, everyone, I helped save a puffin,’ it wouldn’t feel as good as secretly saving a puffin … (I might be losing my thread here …) I think my aim in life is to try for that state when you’re not too high or too low, to just be able to balance on the surfboard. ‘You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf’ – I read that on a Tshirt. This brings me back to why I practise mindfulness each and every day: to stay on that surfboard