I recently got a new glasses prescription. I’d been wearing my old glasses for almost three years and the coating on one lens was slowly flaking off, not to mention a slight prescription change, so I was viewing the world as lightly smudged. But because they hadn’t actually fallen to actual pieces, I kept wearing them. The inability to see individual blades of grass wasn’t materially affecting my ability to generally function.
When we replaced the small TV we had in our living room, my partner was excitedly explaining the improved screen size/quality and smart features—while I was just delighted to have a remote control again, as the old one had been lost in a move ten years ago so volume adjustments had to be done 1950s style (by getting up and walking across the room to the TV).
I like to think of myself as someone who is content, but really a lot of it may just be an aversion to change. When I find something that works, I want to keep doing/having that thing—until it doesn’t work anymore, and I’m forced to find an alternative. It’s an inherited mindset. I have distressing childhood memories of a cycle in which, bright and early every cold Easter morning, we went to the only open store before church to find any little sweater they had that I could wear with my fancy (and usually sleeveless) dress. Every year I would protest the ugly/uncomfortable cardigan my mother hurriedly chose, and every year she would say that it was just for today and we’d get one I actually liked later… and then when I would remind her of this, she would say “but you have one that works.” And now I do it to myself. Usually with something that I do actually like to begin with, but “you have one that works” is etched very deeply into my mind.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Having to get up in order to adjust the TV volume instead of being able to do it from the couch is so minor a complaint as to be laughable. But I do this with habits, too. And sometimes I say something works when actually I haven’t tried anything else.
The kids and I rearranged the living room a few weeks ago. There’s a sort of hall that bisects the house, and in a wide section near the front door we had a “shoe station” with a bench and a shelf, which sounded nice in theory, but in practice meant that the shoes got left all over the walkway and those of us with poor spatial sense repeatedly tripped on the bench, so I dragged some furniture around to make a space for it out of the walkway. Fascinatingly, the kids were so delighted by this that they’ve been actually putting their shoes on the rack instead of leaving them on the floor, and keeping the rest of the living room cleaner as well. With the energy I haven’t been using picking up shoes daily, I’ve been able to sweep that area daily instead—something that definitely needed to be done, but wasn’t because of the aforementioned shoe problem. It’s been very nice to experience a positive cascade, rather than a negative downward spiral.
So this month I’m examining my perceived contentments; asking them if they’re truly what they appear to be, or if they’re covering over a change that could be made for the better.