the joy of contentment
what if joy isn’t found by changing your life, but learning how to meet it?
when you let the moment be,
it reveals what you need to see.
i landed on this little truth teaching through the holidays, a time it felt important to show up as we are, where we are.
santosha is one of the niyamas — the inner observances of yoga.
it is often translated as contentment.
but not the passive type.
not giving in to something less.
more like a path of awakened presence.
or simply, showing up for the moment — just as it is.
and this is where truth shows itself:
for our growth,
for our healing,
for our clarity of living.
as a happiness consultant, this is what first fascinated me about santosha.
why is this the closest the yoga texts come to speaking directly about happiness?
over time, the answer became clear.
santosha is the skill of meeting life without what most of us are quietly guilty of —
constantly wishing, planning, imagining it to be different.
to be better.
to be something other than what is.
what’s right here.
and in that subtle reaching, something important happens.
our attention turns away from what is here now
toward what we wish would be.
and without realizing it, we rob ourselves of the experience of the moment —
we overlook the joy that is already here, waiting.
allowing the moment to be what it is, as it is, ain’t easy.
ir requires we stop bracing against what was,
and rushing toward what’s next.
but when we do? awareness arises.
this is viveka — clear seeing.
to experience ourselves and our lives without distortion.
from here, happiness arises sustainably.
not the fleeting type,
but one founded on truth —
truth of the moment,
and truth of you.
contentment is not complacency.
one of these is resignation.
the other frees us from the binds of unending wishing, wanting, desiring —
the kind that locks happiness in a room somewhere in the future,
behind bars of when i get, if only, once this happens.
joy becomes steady rather than fleeting.
happiness can arrive naked and true —
unmasked by future conditions,
unhooked from negotiation.
where can i soften into what is here, without selling myself a better version?
what becomes available, when i stop negotiating and start noticing?
