“Rome wasn’t
built in a day.” Sure, that common expression applies if it’s around 750 BC. But
if you’re more like my husband and I, you may live in the suburbs and be Lowe’s
poster children to their “Never Stop Improving” slogan. I feel like our house and landscaping projects will only be completed when we sell the house and move to assisted living.
We’re no aqueduct architects. But even with simple projects, and more ideas popping
up on the wish list, sometimes I wonder how endless the progress pursuit is.
I wonder why
we keep doing more. Because when I work to improve I feel productive? Fulfilled? Alive? As soon as one project finishes I
start dreaming and plotting the next one. A guy I dated in my early twenties
told me that I’ll never be happy because I’ll never be satisfied…which bothered
me…(obviously, if I’m still thinking about it 15 years later). Because I was
happy then, and I’m happy now. So what if I’m that person eating from a tub of
caramel popcorn who takes bite after bite seeking a perfect blend of puffiness,
salt, crunch, and sweetness?
Of course there
is always more out there. To do. To learn. To help. To change.
That made me
think. In life, should our goal be...to never be satisfied? To
constantly search for that ideal kernel of caramel popcorn? That way we build
energy as we dream and create. Always having a to-be state means having
something to shoot for—an arrow representing motion, meaning life.
Because if we don’t
find contentment will we become complacent? If we stop improving and complacency
kicks in like a pond with no filter or fountain…do we become as murky, stinky,
and gunky as the standing water? Interestingly—both “content” and “complacent”
have similar definitions--feelings of being satisfied with how things are. Yet the
latter has a negative connotation. Sometimes I wonder if we should strive to
be still, to be mellow and content. I think of Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in
the Night”—or really, those 1996 Bud Ice penguins crooning “Do Be Do Be Do.” We
live in a constant balance between the “do” and the “be”--accomplish vs. relax.
If stillness--to just “be”--
is the end goal, what does that look like? That someday I’ll sip a glass of cool
lemonade on my porch, look at pretty landscaping, and think, wow, I’ve done it—and
I’m content. Then what? I do the same thing the next day? Over and over...is
that fulfilling? Comforting? Bringing satisfaction? I’m not convinced…or maybe
that’s just fuel to justify more improvement projects.
Like Mick
Jagger sang I’ll probably always be in the chorus of not getting satisfaction. But
that does not equate to overall happiness and joy. There is worth in seeking
and improving because it manifests as creative, living energy. Maybe Lowe’s home
improvement outlet has it right...and that making changes brings excitement,
stimulating, um, life’s highs.
