Contentment. That is what rests so effortlessly upon them, within them, around them like a small tree full and swaying gently in the constant wind. They move. They don’t break. They sway. They don’t stumble.
In the moment even in the fiercest of wind, they wait expecting only life to be there in some hopeful form, some beautiful continuation.
There's a difference between us, me and them. My branches touch the ground groaning under the weight of day and discontentment, almost break at times into the splintered shards, the thought that always lurks. You won't be okay, reverberating through deep parts of my uneven heart. Maybe I'm unstable. I know I'm not really. I just can’t usually see as they can.
My seeing different from theirs is not about maturity. It is about fear. Not having. Not being. Their eyes have not lost magic. They see. They have. They expect ...good.
"I couldn’t even sleep last night! I was so excited about Christmas." I smiled somewhat wishing the same.
Unworried or with little lingering concern they flourish, embrace the day and kiss it with an ease of familiarity. They are ready. For life, full in the moment given. The beauty is that they don’t measure, they don’t evaluate, they don't judge the day. They embrace the minute with a standard, decided and very simple effort. It is here. We must live or be left wanting. That is what they know. That is what they have not lost. I, at times, am not. Absent. Lost in wanting. Still in waiting. Not patiently or purposefully, but instead, fidgety and nervous that what is now is not suffice. I need more of what I hope for. Life will be okay when that hope happens.
...for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. Philippians 4:11-12
Having. Another thing I must learn ...again. Not wanting, tangled up in wishing, distracted with what I hope life to be. Having. Owning what is here now. Hands grasping for more shaped by fear of not having a life that I convinced myself I need. I don't. What I need is what I have now.
Contentment does not come easily to us growing in a world hinged on more, overextended on borrowing because of wanting and a burning insatiable hunger of only what we think we need but do not have. Learning. Being more than okay. Laying my head on my pillow recalling graces not earned by me, grateful for the breath drawing in and out of my lungs, resting in what I have.
What I want may never be. What I have is what will always be. Learning to be okay, to be like them excited about what is, little celebrators of the beauty we have now. Found in this day, right in this moment. Having. Living. Being. Satisfied right now.
This time, in these moments of living without measuring and being without needing and even despite it, they have taught me.