Fresca

As with everyone else it seems, the New Year brings a feeling of motivation.  A time to really get something started.  For me its like a feeling of freshness, a new start, a re-do.  (ah, that clean Tide smell...), well, not quite that but this effervesce of promise, and hope.  And that giddy feeling is slowly turning into a mid-day (daily) crisis.  How should I act on it?  I've already broken one of the many resolutions that I have come up with.  So what do I need to do to satisfy this creature?  The one that says- "what the hell are you doing with your life?" 


For the New Year, I want to be able to say that I'm content.   (here's Webster's definition)

¹con·tent

adj \kən-ˈtent\

Definition of CONTENT

: contented, satisfied <was content with her life as it was>

 Content seems like a perfectly cute, simple, reasonable attainment don't you think?  It doesn't bear the responsibility of "admirable", or the ambition of "successful".  It tends to imitate "happy", but has a little leeway for a bad day here and there. 


Here's the difference in my assessment of "content".  I'm afraid "content" gets a bad rap because you could conjure images of "lazy" or "unmotivated" (see above, was content with her life as it was).  To me that looks like she didn't feel any need to change, or progress, to grow.  Webster (not Emmanuel Lewis) regards content as an adjective (yes, it can be used to describe someone-- and ultimately its how I'd like to describe myself, or have others say of me)  but I kind of think of that trait as more of an adverb.  An attainment that requires conscious action and thought.  (hence describing a verb...) An action that requires weeding out the negative or cluttered.  Simplifying to reasonability (is that a word?) makes sense to me...
Being appreciative of what is present, and not longing for more of the physical, but more of the soulful. 


So, New Year's resolution #1. (subsection B, article EE, section 4)  To make me a more content me.  Good thing there's a lot of year left....