It was a Sunday, in the early afternoon, with the sun peeking through wisps of slightly translucent clouds, as my wife and I worked in our front yard. She was planting a new variety of snow peas and spring flowers, while I battled the weeds and grass threatening to permeate the garden. While driving a shovel into a stubborn family of dandelions, I glanced over at our dog, Annabelle, a husky-heeler-comedian mix. I ceased my shoveling activities and watched her for a while. Moments ago, I’d laughed as she shoved her nose, neck, and back into the earth, rolling and sliding around, loving every delightful second of it. She lay a few feet away from us now, her white fur inundated with grass and other bits of nature. I watched as she squinted in the sun, turning her nose up to sniff the air. She seemed to be smiling.
Quite suddenly, her ears popped up as her attention shot to the ground before her. She began pawing at something, a bug most likely. She let it go and looked up at me. Now she really smiled, her tail wagging wildly.
Those who claim dogs don’t smile are kidding themselves.
Dogs smile.
I looked away quickly so that she would not feel obligated to get up. I waited a moment and then looked back. She’d gone on with her squinting and her sniffing and her smiling. I could see that she was just happy to be with us. To share the yard with us. To be among us while we worked. Even though we were not playing with her, stroking her belly, or talking to her in that voice reserved for only her, I could see that she was enjoying herself. I thought about this for while; Here was this dog, lying in the grass, sniffing at the sweet air, taking pleasure in the simplest of things because she was with those she loved. She was content.
We all strive for contentment. Few of us actually achieve it. We mistake contentment as being that time and place where the chips have fallen and landed in perfect patterns of love and success. Often placing more importance on the latter than the former. We have the career we’ve always wanted. The house we’ve always dreamed of. The lover we’ve always fantasized after. We feel good about our bodies and we fit easily into our ideal pant size. We have money. And the dog never shits where it shouldn’t.
The problem with this idea of contentment is its practicality. Especially for those of us who have grown up in the United States and other capitalist nations. For, one of the most basic of principles on which capitalism is based is the principle of dissatisfaction. We are reminded daily that for every item we own, there is a better, faster, sexier version of it available for purchase. We are inundated with voices and images of commercial interest no matter where we are at a given time. Television, radio, billboards and the internet provide the more obvious examples. But there are others. Commercials found within songs and movies. Posters found on and inside busses, trains, taxis, stadiums, libraries, restaurants, theaters, parks, gas stations, even schools. We are told every day that we need new cars, homes, jeans, shoes, underwear, and razors with five blades because they work so much better than razors with four. For Christmas, we receive the electronic toy we’ve been drooling over for months! Only to learn three weeks later that a new version has hit the market. A far superior version if only for its sleekness and size. Thus, making the toy we were once so happy to have received, inferior. Even embarrassing. There is a word for this ongoing purchasing of items one feels he or she needs in order to get ahead in life: Yuppie. In the 1989 anthropological book Our Kind, Marvin Harris calls the yuppie, “perhaps the most voracious and predatory consumers of preciosities the world has ever seen,” and further, that “it is an unrelenting condition of success imposed from above in a society where wealth and power depend on mass consumption. Only people who can prove themselves to the ethos of consumerism are admitted to the higher circles of consumer society.” The problem with this trek for the next best thing is that there is no ceiling. Once one reaches the “higher circles,” there is only more room for costly ascension, and consequently, more debt.
So how do we stem this relentless consumerism? Do we live in the past, as hermits against commerce? The answer can be found in equilibrium. It is okay to want to upgrade your life, but it’s not an upgrade if you’re simply taking another step down a path of perpetual dissatisfaction. We can be humble and proud and thankful for all that we currently have, while still working toward improvements in our lives. In essence, contentment does not equal complacency.
The same can be said of our families and our friends. Whether vocally, or internally, we often treat the ones we love with the same regard as a pair of socks… “I wish she were prettier… I wish he would read more…” We apply the rules of capitalism to our human relationships. We are satisfied, for a time, with our lover, but we keep our eyes open in case someone “better” comes along. We worship and respect our parents until we realize they’re only people, and then we visit them from time to time out of a sense of obligation. We abandon our friends as soon as they do not fit the current mold of our lives. I’ve done that. I had a friend named Mike. Overall, a good guy. We hung out all the time. Got into trouble. Got each other out of trouble. Even shared a house once. But as I worked to better myself, my job, my place in society, he did not. It frustrated me that he did not wish to follow me on my course of ascension to a better life. Since I grew into a “new person” and he did not, I abandoned him. We have not spoken for over 3 years.
I have fallen victim numerous times to the molesting consumerism of our society. I have gone into debt and had nothing to show for it. I have forsaken high school flames because of the opinions of others. I have lost friends because of my own self-righteousness. I have accepted these failures of mine, and used them to try and gain a more complete sense of what it means to be content.
Today, I have a beautiful wife, a great house, and a funny dog.
I’m like anyone else. Sometimes I wish my wife would wear a sexier pair of jeans. I look forward to someday buying a bigger house (One with two bathrooms). And I wish the dog didn’t sometimes shit in the garden. But I am not dissatisfied, and I am not complacent. I am riding that middle line. I seek improvement, but I do not take for granted the things I already have. Life is far too short for perpetual dissatisfaction.
So I continue my journey towards self-improvement, while taking pleasure in all the small, special moments of my life, of which there are many. Such as… My wife’s inspiring intelligence, and her jokes at my expense… Curling up on the floor with the dog, rubbing the soft fur behind her ears… A great cup of coffee… A great glass of wine… Seattle in the summertime… Discovering new music… Discovering a great book… Sun and rain simultaneously touching my face… Seeing the true expanse of the stars, away from the city lights…
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