He was forty-seven. He had a good life and he told himself this regularly. He did not want more. He was done chasing. He had chosen contentment and he meant it.
He noticed, around the same time he was telling himself this, that he had been writing something on evenings and weekends for six months. A project he hadn’t mentioned to anyone. Something he cared about in a way that felt embarrassing.
He hadn’t connected the two things. When he finally did, he sat with it for a while.
There is a version of contentment that is peace. And there is a version that is a lid. The lid version tells you the wanting is done, the seeking is finished, the striving was wrong. And while you perform contentment publicly, something in you keeps making plans quietly, in the evenings, in the notebooks, in the part of your life that you haven’t told anyone about.
The two things are not contradictions. The contented version of you can coexist with the one that is still reaching. Both are real.
I have done the evening projects. The thing I didn’t tell anyone about until it was far enough along to be real. There is something in that secrecy that is more honest than the performance of having arrived.
He told himself he was content. He was also, in the evenings, making something.
One of those things is the truth he tells people. The other one might be the truth.
What is the thing he keeps making even while he says he’s done making things?
Contentment is real. So is the part of us that doesn’t stop reaching. The question is not which one is right. The question is whether the lid version is protecting the real contentment, or just suppressing the real wanting.
He is writing something, evenings, weekends, quietly. He hasn’t said what it is. But it’s there. And it matters.
Some things worth sitting with:
- Is there something you’re quietly working on that doesn’t match the story you tell about yourself?
- What’s the project or idea you keep returning to that you haven’t said out loud yet?
- Is the contentment you feel a kind of peace, or a lid on something still reaching?
You might also find yourself in He Spent Twenty Years Building Something He Wasn’t Sure He Wanted Anymore..
Inspired by a real story shared anonymously online.