"When the solution is simple, God is answering.”
— Albert Einstein
I recently listened to a nearly 4 hour podcast, by two entertaining gentlemen. They would have to be entertaining for me to stick around for that long – I came to the conclusion some time ago that life is far too short to struggle through boring books and movies.
Life IS short, is it not?
One of the things I have little time for these days is complication. And so one of my personal quests is to make my words and deeds as clear as possible.
Complication is only confusing – and when I complicate, I’m confused. I don’t know what I’m talking about and are therefore in no state to inflict myself on someone else. Unless of course, it’s to seek their guidance back to clarity.
But we complicate so much.
Life is actually very simple. So simple we miss the truth, the way forward, because we're seeking the new and the glamorous and the complicated – it feels like the next step up.
In truth, the next step lies in simplification. That means you’re really starting to master things.
Einstein said as much, and he knew a lot about his chosen field.
So four hours of listening … good job they were entertaining because they certainly were complicating things.
The discussion was how to save ourselves – and in doing so, save the world.
“How do we become the highest version of ourselves?”.
“How do we become love and forget fear?”.
A noble topic – and we traveled some major ground. From psychedelic drugs to risk sports to travel to philosophy and deep thought to sacred sex to breathing and exercise to ice and heat and so on …
The whole gamut of the glamorous and the exciting and the bizarre.
And they got to the truth about 3 hours 45 minutes in – right at the end.
Contentment, they agreed.
True, pure, needing nothing contentment was the highest, most transformative state they had ever experienced, after so many hours and years exploring everything under the sun.
The source of ease, but also loving what is. The source of the ability to be present and to meet the need of the moment. The source of pure creativity and its free expression.
Contentment huh?
How simple can you get?
The truth is simple – contentment IS one of the key foundation blocks to all of our highest qualities.
The crime for me, having devoted my life (in part) to making contentment a constant reality, was that they posed a question:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if contentment was a choice?”.
I almost cried for them.
Ahhhh … the height of human experience, they agreed, and for them it was caused. Something that was created by an alignment of some kind of mysterious internal machinery. A flash in the pan. A clouds parting so the sun is revealed in all its glory only for the clouds to obscure things again type moment.
I almost cried because here’s the point – and it’s one I hope to clearly convey to you:
Contentment is INDEED a choice.
Yes, like all choices, it becomes stronger and more consistent the more you do it.
But the fact is it doesn’t need to be caused.
Right now, you CAN choose to let now be enough.
You CAN suspend the search, the need for things to be different. You CAN step out of constant self-criticism or worry, you CAN leave the past and the future alone – for this moment.
You can purely experience now, you can purely experience contentment.
One of the highest, most nurturing and most fulfilling choices you can make – and it’s so simple that people miss its power.
In fact, in our tweaked world view of the extreme chase for more and different, it’s wrongly seen as complacency.
Don’t buy into this.
Contentment and finding enough is the greatest foundation you can have to get more. But in contentment, it’s always the right more that you chase.
Simplify. One of the greatest things you can do for yourself and the world and you can choose to have it now.
Just be content now. Let now be enough. Live your whole life from this base.
But prioritise it – obsess over it even – and you become contentment itself. It chooses you.
Then you can throw all the sex, drugs, rock n roll and risk on top to your heart’s content. But maybe you won’t even need to. Who knows? The one person who will know is … you.
Cool – go well!
Arjuna