Contentment

Life is weird.

If someone told me five years ago that I would be living a life split between Guatemala, Europe and Colorado, I would have laughed out loud. Five years ago, I didn’t travel alone internationally. I didn’t know how to stand on my own two feet without a lot of external support. I didn’t know what was possible if I kept leaning into my own heart. I didn’t know how to let my inside reality match my outside reality. I simply didn’t not have trust in myself five years ago.

Five years, feels like such a short amount of time. But I have experienced more than I can put into words during the past half decade. I have walked through heartbreak, destruction of nearly everything I thought my future would hold, far too many goodbyes, so much travel, courage that I didn’t know I had, opportunities that I had always dreamed of, so much deep and resonate love, lots of therapy in many forms and of course, a lot of tattoos!

Physically, I am different. Mentally, I am different. Emotionally, I am different. Spiritually, I am different. As I should be. Five years, is also a long time. If I were the same person I was five years ago, I would feel stagnant and stuck. To live is to expand, change and grow.

We will go through seasons of life where the pace of growth is rapid and also times of slow and steady change. I feel as though five years of expansion is a lot on the system and I am approaching a season of slowing down. I don’t know if it will last but I am quite ready for it in ways.

The past few months I have barely written. I have processed some things but mostly, I have been enjoying life. I have stayed out of my head more. Overthinking has been less frequent. Anxiety has riddled my body less often. It has been a joy to feel present in myself more even when moments of stress and anxiety arrived.

More being and less doing. Action, expansion and change are energetically exhausting. They require a lot of us. Lately, I have still had a lot of action and intensity in my life but in ways it has felt softer. I have felt calmer and more grounded.

I feel more centered than I have ever been. I feel as though I understand myself while also being much more okay with allowing uncertainty into my life. This is not a place I thought I would ever arrive. To be okay with the unknown while feeling steady and at peace with however life moves. Contentment, is the best word to describe this state.

I am realizing that there has always been this part of me. A part that is okay with anything, goes with the flow and rarely is rattled by the external world. It shows up often when life asks me to pivot. Even when I feel friction internally, this part of me exists. Often, I have put too much weight in always feeling this level of ease. Expecting myself to always feel contentment, no matter the season.

Perhaps that is the ultimate goal; to be content regardless of how life unfolds. But because I am also a messy and imperfect human, it is okay to not feel this way all the time. Or maybe the real magic lies in being content even when I feel messy and confused. Yeah, I like that last option the best and surprisingly, in this moment, I feel as though I am actually doing that.

I have had a lot of glimpses of this state over the past five years. I have found so much peace and ease in my life. It has not been easy or simple. I have put a lot of work and effort and consistent practice into finding this state of contentment. But not shockingly, I had unrealistic expectations of myself.

Recently, while studying with my teacher, we discussed expectations versus intentions. It has made a lot of things tumble around in my mind over this past week. I have written about expectations in the past, probably more than once. How they are often the cause of suffering and friction in our lives and simply letting expectations go can flood our system with relief. But that is a difficult ask for many of us, including myself.

I am realizing, in this very moment, that often our expectations can be so far from our actual goal that when we get to where we hope to be, it looks nothing like what we expected. And because of this, we cannot savor in achieving what we were out to achieve. Simply because our mind doesn’t see it clearly or correctly.

I have to giggle because this is not at all what I expected to write about when I sat down but our minds can do really fun things when we let go and allow. My expectation of what contentment looks and feels like in my life is so far from my current reality that I am sitting here doubting if I can truly call it such. But at the same time, I know this is contentment, deep in my bones. This being okay with however I feel, whatever I experience, without judgement, is contentment.

And I am here. I am content. But it looks so different that what I expected, I keep tripping over this truth. How unfair and silly are our minds. Because it has showed up radically different than I pictured it, I am telling myself that I am doing it wrong. What a gut punch. To work so hard to cultivate trust in myself and sit here full of doubt because it doesn’t feel like the perfect ideal I imagined years ago.

Five years ago, I thought contentment would be a state of constant peace and ease. I believed finding contentment in life would mean no anxiety or stress. That life would simply fall into my lap and I would never have to worry or feel friction and difficulty every again. That I would have so much trust in myself that I would know my path and purpose without any doubt. I would appear to be walking on clouds to everyone around me. The only tension I would carry is the slight smirk of a smile that would permanently exist on my face.

How laughable is that expectation!? Like many expectations, it is so far from reality but I simply couldn’t see it that way. It took years of slowly shifting my perspective and awareness of what contentment holds. Questioning if an expectation I made as a different person five years ago is still valid. Understanding that it is more than okay to adjust my expectations without considering it a failure. And knowing that my awareness of contentment will always continue to evolve.

Now, in this present moment, contentment is radically different than what I described above. It is holding a deep understanding that contentment does not present itself in one uniform way. I can be content while also feeling anxiety and stress. Contentment doesn’t mean having no feelings or emotions about what is happening. In fact, I can hold contentment while experiencing every emotion from joy to grief. I can allow myself to be scattered and messy and still feel the ease of contentment.

Contentment is not a separation from the highs and lows of life, it is being with it fully, without judging, criticizing or blaming myself. Something that I am still obviously working on daily. But moments of curiosity around my expectations always seem to help. Recognizing that my goal and my expectations were not quite as aligned as I thought softened something in me.

So here I am, finding contentment in a way I never imagined. Even with all the feels and emotions from everything going on in this present moment, I feel steady.

Contentment is feeling impatient about not knowing where I will live in a month and not attaching to it. It is being sad and happy all at once about having a few solo days for the first time in over a month. It is not being fully certain about what life will look like in a year. It is grieving the self that I was five years ago while also celebrating who I am actively becoming. it is never fully knowing how I will continue to financially support myself but moving forward anyway. It is missing the people I may not see for a while or perhaps not ever again. It is continuing to create goals and intentions with the hope that I wont stumble over my own unmet expectations. It is all of that and so much more messiness that’s I cannot even begin to put into words.

I suppose my truth in this moment is that contentment doesn’t mean feeling perfectly at peace. It means being perfectly at peace with every feeling. And in that simple little rearrangement of words, I can give myself permission to show up exactly as I am, in this present moment. Instead of holding onto my expectations, I can let go and allow.

What a gift life is. How magical it can all be when we lean in and move forward with love. I’m feeling so much gratitude for every moment I have met over these past five years. And I cannot wait to see what the next five years will teach me.