Happiness Or Contentment - Journal Entry 4

 

 

At the end of my third journal entry, I wrote that I did not know what the next one would be. 

However, not long after that, I received an email from a reader. It consisted of their honest review. They found my first blog modest but thought the other two journal entries were "powerful and amazing". They shared that they had taken something from them, that the perspective offered was something they felt they could learn from and apply to their life now, and they expressed genuine gratitude for that. But they also made a suggestion. Not from a place of judgment, but from a place of authenticity. They said that while reading, part of them wondered if my blog felt “a little too polished, a little too put together", maybe even a little "too perfect.” 

I sat there thinking, hmm… most of what you find on the internet, especially in self-help spaces, is usually written from the other side of the mountain. It comes from a place of arrival, a place of having already achieved something. Then comes the depth, the detail, the discoveries, the ideologies that formed along the way.  I mean, maybe that is just how things naturally unfold anyway, chronological order. You live it first, then you understand it, then you explain it 

And maybe that is why I sat with that email longer than I expected to. Not because I felt attacked, but because I understood the spirit in which it was given. I started asking myself, how do I make this feel more immediate? More present? More like someone is walking beside me instead of hearing from me after I’ve already made it to the top? How do I make this feel less like I reached the summit and threw down a rope, and more like I’m climbing the mountain too, showing people each handhold as I find it? how do I write something that feels less polished, more human, more unfinished, more vulnerable, not in the sense of syntax or craftsmanship, but in the sense of authenticity? How do I show a not-so-perfect version of myself without losing the kind of reflection this blog was built on in the first place? 

When I really sat with those questions, I realized I can talk about the most recent uphill battle in my life; and how it has not been obvious chaos. It was much quieter than that. 

For the last five to six years, I have lived in peace. Real peace. Not perfection, but peace. For the last two years especially, I have felt something I can only describe as ambivalence. Not lost. Not confused. Not falling apart. Just slightly misaligned. Prior to Publishing my first book. As if I had taken 100 steps forward and then 25 steps back, not because I was self-destructing, but because I had reached a point where the progress I worked so hard for no longer progressing 

I had done a lot of what I set out to do. I changed parts of my life and inadvertently the trajectory 

I built stability. 

I flourished in my place of employment. I explored different roles, stepped into leadership, moved into teaching and instruction, and found continued meaning in the work I do. 

I sustained a place of residence long enough for it to become more than shelter. It became “home” in the truest sense, a place with love in it, memories cultivated inside , safety wrapped in a weighted blanket.  

I moved into a bigger space, in a quieter neighborhood, and that too felt like a marker of change, achievement, I guess you can say. (And when I left that place, I cried. I understood what that place meant to me. I understood that part of growth is appreciating something for what it served, while still allowing yourself to want more. I realized that, after the move, it does not directly relate to the original content of this specific journal entry , but it emphasizes the value I had attached to what that place meant to me, and the purpose it served.) 

My daughter has and had continued to do well in her extracurriculars. She has been a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner going on four years now, and watching her navigate her own ups and downs with consistency, resilience, and discipline has been something I genuinely admire. (I thought of Ana Lembke's Dopamine Nation - Pain and Pleasure being co-located in the brain. I.e My daughters exposure to discomfort, is creating space for resiliency)  Things have been amicable with her mother. Life has flowed more easily, Naturally - My work still feels meaningful. The routine I built has remained steady. A lot of things had improved the quality of my life. 

And still, somewhere in all of that - I had found myself feeling uncomfortable again...and here's why... 

Over time, I developed a routine of listening to podcasts on the way to work, throughout the day while cleaning, or while working on the car. In the middle of that routine, I listened to 

 The Diary of a CEO episode with Steven Bartlett and Robert Greene titled "We Are Making Dangerous, Lonely & Broken Men! - Manipulation Expert, Robert Greene! 48 Laws Of Power 

At around the 27-minute mark, Steven says, “It’s hard to distinguish true happiness from the contentment that you get when you are successfully escaping your dark side.” He then expands that thought by questioning whether someone is truly happy, or simply content because they are succeeding in running from their past. 

When I heard that, I felt like I had been knocked right back into “alignment.” 

That feeling was uncomfortable. Heavy. Honest. Reflective, I presume, because it forced me to confront something I had not fully named yet. 

I had dreamed of stability for so long that once I finally had it, I appreciated it so deeply that appreciation slowly turned into containment. What was supposed to be a foundation became a ceiling. What I had built to support my life started becoming the very thing I was afraid to disrupt. Comfort became complacency. Peace became preservation. I was so grateful to no longer be in chaos that I don’t think I had ever truly taken the time to ask myself whether I was happy. I was appreciative, yes, but was I happy? Appreciation feels like a cousin to contentment. They are close in nature, but they are not the same. Happiness was never at the forefront of my mind. Survival was. 

In many ways, all of the hard work I had done through introspection and behavior change was like putting in the practice and learning how to play basketball fundamentally, only to win my first game and start living as if that one win was the point of it all, as if the work had been completed rather than realizing it had only prepared me to keep playing. 

That realization was reinforced by what happened in my relationships. 

There were many things I had taken time to reflect on that served as evidence of my complacency, but one of the realizations that reinforced it most was what had happened in my relationships, especially the friendships I tried to foster after redefining my value, something I touched on in my previous entries. 

One person in particular stands out. They were once very close to me, and I still admire them to this day. They were a positive influence in my life, someone whose perspective I valued, someone who brought objectivity, insight, and the kind of presence that could have become a lifelong friendship. They may not even know it, but they were influential in saving my life. They were like a light during some of the darkest days of my life, before the awareness, before the journey of self-discovery, when I was still indulging in vices and self-sabotaging behavior. (The sweet irony is that I speak about self-sabotage as something that existed before awareness, before growth, before the work I had done on myself, yet this journal entry reveals that self-sabotage can still exist in quieter forms, less obvious, more subtle, more difficult to name.) Their conversations, their effort, their objectivity, and the example they set through the way they lived all shaped me in ways I did not fully understand at the time. They consistently strived for more, built a fruitful life with intention, succeeded in the things they pursued, earned multiple degrees, refused to settle for less in either their professional or personal life, and continue to give back through acts of service to others and philanthropic organizations. More than anything, they were simply a good human being with good intentions, and in their own way, they pushed me toward becoming a better version of myself, both directly and indirectly. We eventually stopped talking, and in the name of honesty, it was my fault. 

At one point, in a drastic attempt to change my environment, I changed my phone number. I only gave it to my employer, my mother, my sister, and my daughters’ mother. At the time, my logic made sense to me. I thought that if I had to go out of my way to notify someone that my number had changed, then maybe I did not really need to be in communication with them. I assumed the people in my daily life, the ones who "truly mattered", would already know or would naturally remain connected. 

I was mistaken. 

What I failed to realize was that I had worked so hard to build a life peace,  worthy of protecting- that I forgot to invest in relationships that were still meaningful, even if they were no longer part of my immediate day-to-day interactions. I let a positive influence, an objective perspective, and the possibility of a lifelong friendship fall to the wayside.

Maybe part of that was fear. Fear that I could not match what was being given to me. Fear that I would fall short. Fear that I could not reciprocate in the way that person deserved. 

I think that is the truth, it was not indifference. I think, deep down, I knew I could not reciprocate what was being offered, and instead of risking that inadequacy, I withdrew. My life had become so content, so carefully structured, that I was no longer motivated to risk trying for more if it meant potentially disturbing the foundation I had worked so hard to build. In hindsight, it is a double-edged sword in some respect. Even as I write this today, I understand the value of reciprocity, and that this experience contributed to refining what reciprocity should be. 

Here's where the paradox consumed me,

Things were not bad enough to force change, but they were not truly fulfilling enough to be called happiness. I had mistaken the absence of chaos for the presence of joy.  

For me, that realization brought "light" to the dark room, that harbored the question. Am I happy or content?  It stopped being about whether life was calm enough, safe enough, or stable enough to finally breathe. I realized it had been a long time since I had gone back and redefined that value - What did happiness look like to me now, what did peace and stability look like to me...now.

The value I once placed on “stability” was shaped before the experience of “peace,” before the perspective, before the lived experience of the last six years. 

I did not obtain peace and stability at the exact same time I experienced self-awareness. 

That awareness came first. Journal entry number 2 speaks more about that part of the journey. There was then a four- to five-year gap before environmental manipulation entered the picture. In that time, I spent years dissecting behaviors, default patterns, life experiences, conditioning, and learned responses. I was reading, studying, buying books, listening to podcasts, and trying to apply what I was learning to my mental, spiritual, and emotional growth. 

Journal entry number 3 speaks more to the revelation that changed my life: being given the information that allowed me to finally put those lessons into practice and truly drive home my evolution. The version of life I had been pursuing, the value of “Stability/Peace,” was originally defined from a place of desperation, from a place of trying to escape chaos. With everything I have lived through since then, contemporarily being at a place in my life , where I believe I am no longer the same person I was years ago, I realized that definition needed refinement. It needed to be revisited through a new lens. 

I KNOW, I’ve said it before, and for those that know me personally, know that I will say it repeatedly.... 

“When your actions do not align with your values, you lose yourself. When your actions align with your values, you find freedom.” 

I have come to believe that happiness has to be defined subjectively. It cannot just be inherited from comfort, and it cannot be reduced to stability alone. It has to be chosen, explored, and redefined with intention.(along with all of our other values) I also think it requires balance. 

Yin and yang. Night and day. Light and dark. Hot and cold. Everything has a balance, and too much of anything, even something good, can become detrimental. 

That is why I think of water. Water is the essence of life. It nourishes us, sustains us, and without it the body breaks down through dehydration. But too much water can also become dangerous. Water intoxication can lead to hyponatremia, which is when the sodium in your blood becomes too diluted. The irony in that is powerful to me. The very thing that gives life can become harmful when balance is lost. 

I think contentment can work the same way. 

Peace is necessary. Stability is necessary. Contentment is necessary. But if we cling too tightly to comfort, if we make contentment the destination instead of the ground we build from, it can quietly become a limitation. It can turn into a ceiling. It can become the very thing that keeps us from continuing to grow. 

That is why I no longer want to think of happiness as something I achieve once and hold onto forever. I do not think it works that way. I do not think happiness is something you capture, keep in your hands, and store away. Looking back, that may have been part of the problem. At some point, contentment became containment. Peace became something I was afraid to disturb. And in that fear, self-sabotage did not completely dissolve; it simply evolved into a quieter, more subtle form. Maybe it was a weaker neural pathway. Maybe it was less noticeable because it no longer disrupted my day-to-day life in the ways I had once been familiar with. Once I took the time to become introspective again, I realized it was still very much there; self-sabotage, that is. I think that is what I had to confront. One, that the process of evolution should be ongoing, and two, that happiness was never meant to be a destination I protected at all costs, but something living, something that still requires honesty, consistent reflection, growth, and most importantly, movement. 

What I want instead is to fall in love with the pursuit of happiness. 

Not the shallow version of that phrase. Not theatrical chase. I mean the deeper pursuit. The one that asks for honesty. The one that asks you to stay aware, stay balanced, and keep consistently defining what matters as you evolve. The one that is less about possessing happiness and more about becoming a person who is aligned with it. 

And for me, that pursuit keeps bringing me back to love. Not just romantic love, but agape. A way of being. A way of moving through the world with a kind of love that is generous, steady, and expansive. A way of living at a frequency that gives other people space to acknowledge their own light. A way of inspiring love, kindness, and compassion, not by forcing it, but by embodying it. 

Maybe happiness is not something we keep. 
Maybe it is something we practice. 
Maybe it is something we pursue. 
Maybe it is something we become more available to as we keep growing, keep recalibrating, and keep choosing purpose over passivity. 

Maybe contentment was never meant to be the end goal. Maybe it was always meant to be the place where I finally caught my breath long enough to begin again. 

Perhaps that’s the process we should fall in love with...catching your breath and beginning again. 

Thank you for giving me one of your most valuable assets, your attention. It is my hope, this journal is reciprocal. 

With gratitude, 

Reflections of Mr. E