Come With Me (Contentment level: Beginner).

Bzzzzz there is a fly in this room right now. I cannot stand the filth I feel at times when there is a fly in the room. As though he is taunting me with his unnecessary buzz. What is that sound that comes from a housefly anyways? Is it their wings? Do they purposely make that sound to make them even more detestable? They are gross because they start out as maggots, they tend to poop whenever they land, they tend to be around gross things, and like my dog, tend to track in the house what they were recently in.

How can I possibly find peace with this? How in the world am I able to dig deep enough to, "just ignore" the fly and continue on with as much contentment as I had before I head the fly's buzzing past my head? I cannot recall how content I was before this. I now realize what I had because it is gone. A tiny fly, his unnecessary noise, and now an interpretation of filth, how would anyone ever, feel content again?

Well, I guess, someone could have it worse than the fly, like my house could burn down, and my family and I could be homeless. I guess that situation would have me appreciate the fly's buzzing for at least there was just one and at least I am still in the AC, and at least I still have WiFi and...., "OK" it could be worse, that much I get. But do we have to experience the absolute worst in life to appreciate the relatively minor? Isn't being content all about perspective then? Do we need to have lived Viktor Frankl's life to be content with life now?

The only reason we become content due to tolerance to once minor offenses is because we know there is worse. When a child is born, the frigid temperatures outside their mother's womb, the removal from comfort, the trauma of birth; a harsh reminder of the content situations once had. Sure a baby wants to come out and do stuff, but there are no guarantees and the risk taken is that of the highest caliber. So, contentment is an after the fact thought? Is being content only something we can look back on when things get worse and we can now reminisce about, "The good ol' days?"

The perspective shift has to occur for contentment to be found. Not only can a person find contentment in the same situation, like my fly one right now without having to remove the fly and disrupt my entire basement, but I can obtain a change of perspective and therefore allow the fly to live and be. Yes, I can see value in flies despite what I originally thought. This way, the fly is no longer a nuance but as a reminder of how good life is. The small detriment to an otherwise content situation isn't a detriment at all, but a taste of the outside world. Another example is when the temperatures hit 87 degrees all of a sudden this past week and the AC unit was broken (we thought). The upstairs bedrooms were a sweltering 80 degrees due to the downstairs air being on, but no air was getting upstairs. We discovered through amateur investigations that there was a second AC unit in the attic. We discovered this after almost making a service request only to find the breaker that said, "AC2." I went from being miserable with the temperatures for being grateful of the kings we get to live like.

Ahhhh, like a cold glass of something pure, the AC reminds us of just how good we have it here. 

I was sick last week and for two days I was unable to do my usual routine. I had to tell work I was going to miss, and my energy and appetite were askew. In my mind during those times, I was falling apart. Also, when I get sick, I feel mentally depressed (sorry for anything I may have written last week). I was all out of sorts, but even in the midst of misery I recognized that I would have never broken my obsessive routine without a firm stepping in by God. He reminded me just how far obsessed I tend to become. It's only a few days later, but already I am able to see that my routines interfered more than I acknowledged. I now get to start again, being more aware than the last time of their interferences. I am growing if I want to see it that way. Or, I guess I could focus on the production lost in my personal life, sick days taken, things I had no control over anyway.

So, you can see through even the past few days examples of minor inconveniences in life have the potential to inflict an opportunity to change. Not just change by ignoring, or willing to be different, but truly seeing something different to accept reality. Not that we agree or are passively living, but accepting that something happened. I accept that I might not always get to write or that I may not have a house someday, but for right now my family and I do, and that once-annoying fly is now constantly singing in my ear a lovely tune.

Change your perspective, change your distraction. One man's detriment is another man's reminder. A cookie broken is still a cookie, accept the things you cannot change... I think you get the point.

Um, speaking of obsessive routines, Castle-Broken has a chapter in their where I describe my own obsessive need to complete routines and what I did to help break that cycle. Available HERE. 

P.S. the fly is back.