contentment, an aside
Jun. 4th, 2003 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maribouI realized the other day that while I often describe myself as 'supremely content' with my life, I may not be using the word normally.
Many people I know seem to see contentment as relatively passionless, a quiet, uneventful, 'settling for' sort of emotion - the maturation of, or resignation from, joy.
Let me serve notice that that is not my definition.
When I say I am content, I mean that I spend more of my time than not immersed in a bubbly foam of bliss. I mean that the bleak desolation which still visits me occasionally is both easier to meet and less world-obliterating, and that it has become a distant cousin who comes around once in a blue moon, instead of being that annoying room mate I could never seem to avoid for long.
Remember with me for a minute. You know the last time you felt so purely and steadily happy that you might breach the limits of your skin? How you couldn't keep from humming, and laughing, and caressing random objects? That's what I mean by contentment, these days, and that's how I normally feel, these past few years.
It's true that I sometimes have to filter it in order to function as a normal person, and it's true that I sometimes lose track of it under all the filters, and have to dig around for a while to get it loose. However, it remains my fundamental tone.
Many people I know seem to see contentment as relatively passionless, a quiet, uneventful, 'settling for' sort of emotion - the maturation of, or resignation from, joy.
Let me serve notice that that is not my definition.
When I say I am content, I mean that I spend more of my time than not immersed in a bubbly foam of bliss. I mean that the bleak desolation which still visits me occasionally is both easier to meet and less world-obliterating, and that it has become a distant cousin who comes around once in a blue moon, instead of being that annoying room mate I could never seem to avoid for long.
Remember with me for a minute. You know the last time you felt so purely and steadily happy that you might breach the limits of your skin? How you couldn't keep from humming, and laughing, and caressing random objects? That's what I mean by contentment, these days, and that's how I normally feel, these past few years.
It's true that I sometimes have to filter it in order to function as a normal person, and it's true that I sometimes lose track of it under all the filters, and have to dig around for a while to get it loose. However, it remains my fundamental tone.
