Contentment vs. Happiness

He who endeavors to neither compare nor compete shall always be content.

The subtitle to this post has been in the back of my mind for nearly three decades. However, I cannot locate the exact source. It has been so long that I do not know if it is my wording or if it is only that the text is not available online. Either way, it’s got a ring to it.

It is most likely based on the eighth chapter of the Tao Te Ching, which ends with the following verse:

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
- Stephen Mitchell's translation

Dog-eared and well-worn

I’ve got my mind on the Tao, and the Tao on my mind.

I carry a Pocket Edition of the Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao Te Ching wherever I go. It is something I refer to, and reflect on, often. I am certainly not a Taoist scholar, or even a Taoist for that matter, but I do find a lot of peace and wisdom in the pages of this book.

Purchased 27 years ago today.

When I think back to when I felt most centered in my life, it was back around the time I bought this particular copy. It was in the readings of the Tao and Zen Buddhism that I found contentment. They taught me to look inward rather than outward, that my value is found within myself, rather than in how I measured up to my peers.

Looking back, I realize this book helped learn to accept and love myself. I have written before about feeling unloveable, and that was not limited to love from others. I thought of myself as “less” than those around me, as if I was missing something, or doing something wrong. Comparison to others was a burden that Eastern philosophy helped me learn to let go.

Comparison Is Criticism

When you compare one thing to another, criticism is part of the process. If I pick up two pens to decide which to journal with today, one will be selected over the other. Does that mean that one is “less” than the other? No, it only means they are different. This is the same for people, pets, or anything else we evaluate.

When we compare Item A to Item B, we one must be chosen over the other, and that decision will be based on subjective valuation.

Paolo Peralta

put it nicely the other day:

Comparing is seeing in a distorted way.

We can never really fully understand anything for what it is in comparison to another. A better habit would be to truly receive anything for what it is with no judgement attached. ~ Let Go of Comparing

If you get a new puppy, and then compare it to your childhood dog, you are stealing value from the new puppy. This is the difficult part, as we all do this all the time. We compare our new car to our previous car, our new job to our old job, this apartment to that apartment. It is how we work.

Comparison is an intellectual shortcut we use to put things into categories so we can understand them. However, that did not work well for the first Western scientists to get their hands on a preserved platypus.

The unusual appearance of this egg-laying, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal at first baffled European naturalists. In 1799, the first scientists to examine a preserved platypus body judged it a fake made of several animals sewn together. - Wikipedia

Source: Platypus - Wikipedia

I challenge you to be brave enough to “be a Platypus.” We should have International Be a Platypus Day as a day for every one of us to stand up and defy classification. To say, “I am not what you see, what you hear, or what you think of me. I am what I am, and I refuse to be limited by the limited vocabulary or imagination of anyone, including myself.”

Clarity Over Comparison

If you use one thing as the measure of another, the other will always come up wanting, as no two things are the same. In such comparison, the differences diminish the features you may otherwise espouse as lovely qualities as ‘faults.’

Instead, we should seek the “beginner’s mind,” or “child-like wonder” in our viewing of things. With such mindset framing the new puppy is a magical thing all its own. The color of its fur, the lay of its ears, and the music of its claws on the flooring. All these aspects are particular to this puppy, not to be limited by prior schema around the term, or concept, of “puppy.”

True seeing is accepting things as they are, not as we can compare and categorize them, as the categorizing process inherently includes assessments and valuations.

So why do we compare ourselves to others? Why hop on the social treadmill and struggle along to “keep along with the Jones’?” (Who the hell are the Jones’ anyway?) This treadmill, where we “need a new car” because the neighbors just bought one, never stops.

There is no end to this race. So why bother running at all? Why not run your own race, by your own rules, with your own prizes?

We chase happiness, but in the effort fail to take stock of what we already have and choose to be content with it. To quote Sheryl Crow:

It’s not having what you want,
It's wanting what you've got.
~ Soak Up the Sun

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Content?

In the West, and most specifically the USA, we spend our lives in “the pursuit of happiness,” yet nobody ever seems to point out the problematic wording. Why not “attainment,” “possession,” or some other verb which does not imply happiness is something which is always just outside our grasp?

This particular wording brings to mind the poor race dogs who chase the fake rabbit around the track, never to actually catch it.

I heard the pursuit of happiness explained once as a puppy chasing its own tail. It will never catch its tail, waste hours in the effort, while completely missing the fact that they had it all the time.

In a recent article,

Donna McArthur

shares the following regarding comparison:

…how about if you and I vow to do better at the comparison game because carrying it inside is an energy robber. Let’s start to accept that we are good at some stuff and not so good at other things and that’s okay.

I like that. The Jones’ may be good at collecting assets, toys, and fancy lawn ornaments, but over here I am happy with my bookshelf of as-of-yet-unread books, my iPhone with the cracked screen, and my modest country life.

In short, I recently realized that while I may not define myself as “Happy,” I strongly believe I am “Content.” And the more I think that the more I am starting to believe they are the same thing.

Contentment has the scales tipping towards the Santa side these days. Ho, ho, ho!