Allow It for Contentment

We all have a different image of contentment.

A cottage in the countryside.

Lazing on a beach somewhere warm.

Sufficient money not to worry.

A happy family who all get on.

Good health.

Quality of life.

However, is contentment something we gradually possess or something we gradually notice?

There is a tendency to look towards the next goal, the next benchmark, the right relationship, a better version of ourselves.

There always seems to be another hill to climb, promising what this one didn’t quite deliver.

Ambition and progress are admirable traits. Yet somehow we’ve quietly acceptedaccepted the idea that contentment lives somewhere in the future.

Reality might suggest otherwise.

The older I become, the more I feel that contentment has little to do with having everything and more to do with seeing everything a little clearer.

Consider observation.

There is such a difference between looking and observing.

Looking is intuitive, inborn and continuous.

Observation allows us to see.

Observation is conscious and aware.

When we truly observe ~ life begins to reveal itself in different ways.

We find more meanings in conversations. We begin to notice what was always there in the people we’re closest to.

Reality doesn’t change.

Our awareness does.

Awareness notices.

Awareness notices opinions, our judgements, expectations and projected fears.

Awareness requires nothing more than objective, impartial observation.

Observation is a wonderful ability.

It slows us down just enough to experience reality instead of sleepwalking through life on autopilot.

Maybe that’s why allowance seems so liberating.

Rather than resignation, allowance faces reality sufficiently to realise its hidden lessons.

Rather than dictating, reality unfolds to our way of thinking that life has a canny knack of providing better solutions than we could have imagined for ourselves.

Just because we see reality with awareness and observation doesn’t automatically make life all beer and skittles.

Life still brings disappointment, uncertainty, grief, inconvenience and change. However, that’s all part of being human.

Yet alongside them we find kindness, beauty and moments we could never have planned.

Observation notices both. Awareness feels both.

Allowance accepts both.

Contentment could be a quiet resignation that both make up a human life.

I wonder if that’s when the soul recognises another element of enlightenment.

Contentment not as a destination. More a form of moving on ~ or moving up.

The soul seems uninterested in perfection. It appears far more interested in our consciousness. In becoming aware. In us experiencing reality honestly. In us allowing any circumstances to offer whatever they came to teach.

Perhaps every joy enriches it. Every disappointment navigated strengthens it.

Perhaps every reality leaves a little wisdom.

That thought can bring great comfort.

If so, it means life never stops offering something valuable, even when it arrives disguised as adversity.

Maybe contentment was never a finish line.

Maybe it’s woven through life’s journey itself.

Found in awareness.

Developed by observation.

Catalysed by allowance.

And gently assisted by the soul as we learn, one reality at a time.

Allow it.

Leo 💚