If there is one thing that I am famously bad at it is being content. I’m always rocking on my heels ready to run to the next opportunity, whether I’ve completed the current one or not. Sometimes this trait in me is mistaken for perfectionism – my dissatisfaction with a plate presentation for a VIP banquet or my frustration of not knowing how to fix a sauce that has gone awry or even worse the aggravation when something I am not pleased with becomes a beloved recipe of customers that I have to recreated repeatedly for months to come.
Ironically I believe my inability to be content may be the single biggest reason I have not achieved the level of success that I want in my career, family, or faith. In this day and age I could easily blame it on ADD or some similar clinical disorder that would justify my low-level success and no one would fault my failures. I could also justify it by invoking the history and tradition of young cooks learning the trade leaving for a new kitchen every year or two. But that isn’t why I fail to be content.
In truth, the reason I have a hard time being content is a perceptual issue. I associate contentment with mediocrity, apathy, and giving up. In my head I hear that voice of historical apathetics saying, “Why can’t you just be content with what you have” and it makes me cringe.
I am, however, trying to change my perspective on contentment. I’m learning that being content does not mean that a person should be satisfied with a mediocre place in life and that I don’t have to accept the small things and make myself satisfied with less than I deserve.
But I have also learned that, “being content means acceptance without self-pity. Some have trials to pass through, while still others have allotments they are to live with. Such contentment is more than shoulder-shrugging passivity. It reflects our participative assent rather than uncaring resignation.” [1]
Everyday I work on defining and finding that place where I can do what I love, the way that I love to do it, and still provide for my family. But at the same time I also try to find contentment in my current place. I have been blessed with an opportunity to grow in my current place and to spend every moment yearning for more while doing nothing with what I have will not move me forward.
Finally I’m working on fighting discontent. Discontent in an individual is a great force working like a revolution, up heaving the finer qualities, promoting confusion, breaking harmony and contact with universal intelligence.[2]
When a person is contented, his whole life is focused upon the task at hand while constantly cultivating future opportunity when the time is right. Are you wholly content with your life? What do you find helps you fight off discontent and mediocrity?
[1] Neal A. Maxwell, “Content with the Things Allotted unto Us,” Ensign, May 2000, 72 [2] Barnes, Floyd Foster, Trapping Sunbeams, 1923
