Contentment is Key for Me

 “Being content is quite remarkable and often undervalued….”

 

This quote I stole from a Friend I have on social media. When I first read it, I read it twice then several more times, committing it to memory. It hit me where I live. A blinding flash of the obvious for many folks but it resonated with me in a big way. I took it to heart. In retrospect, having gone 'ninety to nothing' for nearly all of my adult life, I should have paid more attention to contentment when I had been up to my nostrils in work, kids, bills, and on and on. I should have taken more time to smell the roses, live in the moment, and not shove ten pounds of crap into a 5 pound bag. 

In my late middle age where I'm presently situated, I experience and take note of my contentment more often. For example, sitting on my ass watching Baseball, Westerns and anything black and white on TV makes me content. The contentment comes from the familiarity of things, like when Perry Masons' District Attorney Hamilton Burger objects to something he always says  "Your Honor I object! That question is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial!"

Eating, while a necessity, also provide contentment. Van Camps, the Pork and Beans folks, had a commercial slogan that said "Life's simple pleasures are the best", and they were right. 

Sometimes I eat and make puppy dog noises. If that ain't contentment, I don't know what is. 

Sleep is yet another thing to enjoy. As far as sleeping is concerned, nobody appreciates a nap better than Shugaluvs, who always asks me after her nap "Why did you let me sleep so long?", to which I reply, "You seemed content.' Quality sleep for me consists of sleeping thru the night. This as evaded me for quite a while, now. Usually the cause its either my bladder or my hound dog Satchels bladder. I recall about 2 years ago Satchel and I both slept thru the night. I awoke, panicking as if I had slept thru my alarm, then reached down and felt where I lay to see if perhaps my bladder had done its own business without consulting me. All was well! It was a most contented day.

 I like to have an occasional libation and smoke an overpriced cigar on a Friday evening while talking to my longtime Army buddy Tommy who does the same. We speak of bourbon, Scotch, Cigars, World War II, tentative World War III, Politics, Home repairs, and other manly man topics. We use big words, too, like "Indubitably" but pronounce it with a British accent so it comes out like, which causes raucous laughter. It is some of contentment's finest hour.

Full disclosure, I'm a lightweight when it comes to imbibing. On the occasions that I have a second cocktail, Shugaluvs will text the kids to let 'em know George is on his second drink. That is warning to tell them to turn off their text notifications because I can get a bit 'chatty with the chillunz'. What can I tell you, it makes me content.

But when my contentment is most content is when the family is together, everyone is talking over each other and the noise level is shrill to the point of being obscene. On these occasions I look at our Matriarch, Shugaluvs, and the contentment on her face says it all.