Aspirational Contentment

Perhaps you’ve heard of voluntary simplicity: choosing to live a simpler and more intentional life for the sake of greater personal fulfillment, richer community, and a healthier environment. The voluntary simplicity movement was bolstered immensely by the 1981 publication of Duane Elgin’s groundbreaking book of the same name. Unfortunately, we’re now more than forty years down the road, and human civilization is more complex than ever. It’s no longer hyperbole to speak of our being just one economic shock, one viral pandemic, one-degree Celsius increase in average temperature, or one war away from chaotic global disruption. Given that so many of the world’s problems are either directly or indirectly tied to an excessively complex and materialistic human lifestyle, why hasn’t the embrace of simplicity taken hold and become the prevailing aesthetic?

Our problems would be nowhere near as intractable if we could just be content with a simpler version of all that is materially available to us right now. Contentment is so elusive, though! There are always so many new products and apps and experiences to be had. There’s that dream job out there somewhere, and our dream house with all the material comforts that we need. There’s that sunshiny future forever calling us in which we have abundant means and everything is balanced just so in order for us to do everything we’ve always wanted to do. Perhaps, then, before we’re ready to wholeheartedly embrace the tenets of voluntary simplicity, we need to learn just a little bit more about contentment – how to identify, appreciate, explore, and cultivate it. With practice in these areas, contentment will more often be an option that is open to us.

Author and spouse share a contented moment

The process of learning to identify, appreciate, explore, and cultivate contentment is one that l call aspirational contentment. Aspirational contentment is an openness to contentment, a willingness and a readiness to be content. Perhaps we’re not content at this moment, but with aspirational contentment we understand that contentment is possible and we choose to remain receptive to it. Aspirational contentment, then, is the gradual movement from a state of chronic discontent to a state wherein we’re able to consciously choose and embrace contentment.

The discontent of modern humanity has only been accelerating. I’ve experienced its quickening pace over the course of most of my life. Do you remember 8-track tapes? I was an early adopter. Yes, I’m old. After their demise, I collected LPs, which I frequently ended up copying onto cassettes. CDs came next, of course, and streaming after that. How much money have I spent over the years chasing after music on the medium du jour? If only I’d just begun with and stayed with LPs way back when! Ah, but would I have been content with not having music on the road with me, or at the touch of a finger, as I do now? Similarly, if you’re old enough to remember the inception of personal computers and internet connectivity, you’ll also remember the need to upgrade everything on a regular basis simply to maintain functionality. It didn’t matter what you wanted, emerging content and the means to receive it was foisted upon you. And the process continues. I just read about someone whose phone software, after just three years, will no longer be supported by the company. Whereas this person might have remained content with their phone for years to come, safety required that it be replaced.

On a larger scale, I recall a local news station in my old hometown doing a story on how much energy would be saved that year at the local baseball stadium after swapping out the older generation video scoreboards for new flat-screen technology. Reportedly the energy savings would be equivalent to that needed to power 300 homes for a year. It was supposed to be a feel-good kind of story, an “isn’t it great how green we’re becoming” kind of story. However, I just couldn’t help thinking about the fact that those “old” scoreboards had only been there about five years. They were installed when the new stadium replaced the old one of just 39 years. And I couldn’t help wondering what would become of the now-obsolete video boards that the new flat-screens replaced. Would they be recycled, would they end up in a landfill, would their toxic components end up leaching into the ground water somewhere? And what about all of those 8-track tapes, CDs, obsolete computers and phones, etc.? What is the real cost of all of this building up and tearing down and replacing?

Sure enough, the stock market loves all of this building up, tearing down, and replacing. Our economic system requires such growth, and this growth creates jobs, too, of course. But it also requires an incredible amount of energy – a requirement that’s cost us dearly over the years in lives, military hardware, and general goodwill in the world. It doesn’t much help the state of our warming planet, either. Thus, our individual discontent is embedded within a larger economic/cultural system which breeds and fosters (and requires) that discontent. The system rewards us, on one hand, with a job and the stuff that we’ve come to be convinced that we need. On the other hand, though, it sucks the very life out of us by stealing away our energy in order to perpetuate a dysfunctional system. 

Voluntary simplicity and aspirational contentment are antidotes to our personal discontent. If adopted in large numbers, however, they can also help ameliorate our dysfunctional economic system. We will not be able to halt or even slow our degradation of the environment or our warming of the earth until those of us in highly developed areas begin consciously moving in large numbers towards simpler and less materialistic lifestyles. Similarly, by embracing the tenets of voluntary simplicity, developing areas of the world might find it possible to eschew increased complexity and consumption for the sake of sustainability even as higher levels of material affluence become available to them. In this way, people all over the world might come to enjoy a way of life that is both nurturing and sustainable – albeit at a decidedly lower level of material affluence than the average U.S. household at present. Or, as Mahatma Gandhi put it: “Live simply so that others may simply live.” Such an achievement couldn’t help but work wonders with respect to fostering trust, cooperation, and peace in a world where all three are in short supply.

Given the nature of our overly materialistic society, the word contentment carries with it many negative connotations such as passivity, meekness, weakness, impotence, dependency, lack of imagination, and perhaps even lack of intelligence. In other words, so some might think, we resign ourselves to contentment because we lack the required confidence, agency, strength, skill, or independence to go out and get what we really want. Or perhaps we’re merely content because of our failure to envision how much better things could be if only this or that or thus-and-such would occur. However, we can achieve a sort of linguistic balance by coupling the word contentment with aspiration, a word which has its very own positively-viewed connotations of potency, will, agency, and imagination. Aspirational contentment, then, encompasses multiple meanings. In one sense it conveys the reality that even though we might not be very content in this moment, we nonetheless aspire to be more so in the next. This takes contentment out of the realm of passivity and positions it within the realm of that which is valued, chosen, and worked towards. In another sense, aspirational contentment conveys the recognition that contentment is a viable solution to the many problems that we face – perhaps even the best/only solution. We choose to become more content because we aspire to live in a healthier and more just world. We do not lack imagination or intelligence. Quite to the contrary, our movement towards contentment is informed by our keen awareness of the problems inherent in our current way of being and our ability to clearly envision a more life-giving and life-affirming way of being.

Let me close by elaborating on the process of identifying, appreciating, exploring, and cultivating contentment. We can begin by identifying those moments when we actually are content, even if only fleetingly. By doing so we remind ourselves of the possibility. We have to begin somewhere. Second, let’s take the time to appreciate our contentedness. After all, what good is contentment if we don’t allow ourselves time to savor it! Let’s learn to appreciate it for the refuge that it is. Third, let’s explore the conditions preceding our contentment. And what then ends up pulling us away? Is it fear? Boredom? Loneliness? Some conditioned response that’s thus far gone unexamined? Do we notice any patterns? Are there certain thoughts or feelings that reoccur? Becoming hungry again after our contentment following a meal will be a recurring pattern, of course. How about contentment with our work, our home, our car, our relationships? This exploration will likely naturally transition into the cultivation of contentment. Becoming conscious of the ebbs and flows of contentment allows us to enjoy it more often, and for longer periods. Can we remain content with an older version of a phone, even after our friends all have the new one? Let’s try! Can we remain content with our older clothes even after the fashions change? Will we mend them when they need it? Can we learn to be content with sharing a vehicle with our partner, or using mass transit, even if it is a little bit inconvenient? Can we learn to be content with home-cooked meals? Can we settle into enjoying whatever foods our garden offers up? Can we make a habit of requesting that latest publication from the library rather than purchasing it outright as we always did? Let’s use our imagination! Let’s make our life a garden in which contentment always blooms!

 

This post is an edited and rewritten version of Aspirational Contentment and Aspirational Contentment, Part 2 which were originally published on 4/13/2022 and 4/22/2012, respectively.  

 

Image Credits

Photo courtesy of the author.

Copyright 2012 and 2022 by Mark Robert Frank