I met a woman once, not so long ago, who was expressing her unsettled feelings.  I only met her a couple of times, but each time she was rapidly and intensely expressive about how she wished she had made different decisions, always anxious about whether or not something else might have been better.  She described how she moved from job to job thinking the next thing would be the best, how she moved her family into a big house thinking that would be the best, her children into a private school wanting the best for them.   How she had to take a different, higher paying job to pay for the all the decisions she had made and now how tired she was, stressed out and not at all sure that anything was best after all.  That in reality her family had been the most happy in their small cozy home, kids in public school, she at a job she liked.

She reminds me of me.  Internally, though I rarely express it aloud, I too wonder if  living in a different place would be better, a different (or any right now!) job would make me happier, if living alone would be better for me than living with someone else.  And yet I know from experience that when the work world was busy I wished it would slow down, and when it slowed down I worried that the work would never come back.  I remember when I lived alone and wished there was someone else there.  Why is it such a difficult thing to appreciate what we have right now while we have it?  Why can’t we just be happy with what we have?  Why must we wonder what it would be like if...

Yesterday I purchased a teapot.  You’d be right to wonder what that has to do with being satisfied with life as it is.  It’s just that I’ve wanted a teapot for a long time.  A really long time.  And last night while my husband and I were out shopping for other things we wandered by the teapots and actually stopped and picked one out.   So now I have a little spot of color in my kitchen, and I’m sitting with a hot cup of tea watching the birds outside my window while fragrant meatloaf is baking in the oven.

I think for the moment I’ll learn from the lady with her frantically scattered fearful thoughts  and just sit here enjoying what I have.  I have beautiful birds outside, finches and chickadees and nuthatches, cardinals and a big woodpecker, titmice and sparrows.  I have Katie asleep nearby and a husband off in the den.  Dinner is in the oven.  The sun is sort of shining.  I don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow.  And I’m reading a great book; “Night Gardening” by E. L. Swann.

I think I am content.