contented

When I was fifteen, twenty or even twenty-five, "contented" was not a state I pursued. A simple, grounded, in-my-bones kind of happiness-- a happiness wedded to peace, not to ecstasy-- was a foreign and perhaps undesirable state of being.

It's possible that at twenty-five I was beginning to look for it. I can't quite remember. But certainly the much-younger me had too much energy and ambition and craving to accept a state of deep satisfaction. Deep satisfaction definitely would have sounded like a cop-out.

For right now, deep satisfaction is highly pleasurable. There is no peripheral pull for it to be otherwise. It walks slowly, listens to the birds, tastes the coffee and just says "thank you, this is good."