I am forever imagining the version of me that is not imagining another version of me. The me that rises early, writes, goes to work, works out, meditates. The me with discipline and regularity. Then there is the me that travels the world, the me that is spontaneous and expansive, living life to the fullest, free from worry. These are just two of many–dominant characters, but not exclusive.
I imagine everyone has their form of this. And, ironically, despite all evidence to the contrary, part of the imagining involves imbuing each of these characters with the contentment that evades us now. When X happens, or when I achieve Y, I will be content. I will no longer strain for more versions of myself, no longer feel a push or a pull from who I am right now, my particular set of joys and troubles.
It can be informative to map out the shape of projected life you are longing for right now: I have found that its contour fits perfectly into the blind spots of my current state, and hence presents itself as a kind of perfection. When I am swimming in the unknowing, supersaturated with freedom, I long for borders, regularity, knowable goals. When I am constrained by routine, I long for escape. In other words, any positionality change brings with it a new set of blind spots.
So what can the word ‘content’ teach us about ourselves? Content comes from the Latin Com (together, with) + Tenere (to hold), hence “to hold together, enclose.” As far back as the Latin Contentus it carried the meaning it does today, of “contained, satisfied.” When you look at its usage throughout time, we see it used as an adjective in English in the 1400s, with the attributed sense of “contained within limits,” and therefore “having the desire limited to present enjoyments.”
I find this logic fascinating and illuminating, not least of all because I don’t usually correlate contentment with desire. If anything, I associate it with the opposite, with a freedom from desire. In this sense, to be content is not to float above desire, miraculously detached, but to somehow limit it to its appropriate object: our present enjoyments. To be content, then, is to live in the moment. In a strange way, this also ties in with another usage of content: the noun, the ever pervasive ‘filling’ circulating our phones and minds and lives. The infinite substacks, tik toks, tv shows, news articles, reels, etc.
I originally looked into the etymology of content because of the seeming distance between its usages (always a fertile place to dig, in the world of etymology). But the more I think about it, the more delighted I am by the corollary between the adjectival sense of ‘desire limited to present enjoyments’ and content as a noun. Content, especially in the current day, is nothing if not limited to the present moment. There are many (valid) ways to critique it, but content is easily understood as desire limited to a singular moment in time: a tik tok reel is ingested, hopefully enjoyed, and immediately discarded. In a less stark contrast, I could paint the picture of being fully absorbed in a book (content) being a pure form of contentment.
Perhaps what I’ll settle on (for today) is this: I might be approaching contentment all wrong. It’s a bit like a positive space versus negative space issue, or like seeing the old woman or the young woman in the same picture.
I’ve been idolizing contentment as a state outside of its present perimeters, a state that is untouchable by external conditions, when in fact it is maybe exactly the opposite: a deep attachment to, acceptance, and yes, pleasure, in exactly the perimeters I am operating in. Right now.