while in Yoga today our beautiful teacher gave a little chat from one of the sutras about cultivating contentment. It just struck me as about the best advice that could possibly be given regardless of circumstances. Cultivating contentment, like gardening in general, is really about being present, intentional and reasonably quiet. In our industrialized consumer life - contentment seems elusive. The news would have you believe that the whole world is going to hell in a handbag and the discontent is the order of the day. We are always too fat or too thin or too something. Even growing old is worthy of complaint. Rather than embracing the idea that "growing old is a privileged denied to many" , there is a tendency to grouse about the pull of gravity.
I found the idea of "growing contentment" just like growing peonies or iris or carrots a very stabilizing notion. Here I am in one of the most beautiful places in the world with friends, a garden, an orchard and the memory of a life well lived - being discontent would be an affront to all of that. Instead I am trying to learn little by little to see contentment differently and that it can arise in surprising places. I am pretty sure Tom would agree with that.
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