Contentment—The Image(s)
Ahhh, contentment. The peace that passes all understanding. The nectar of life. The most elusive and rare substance on earth and if we colonize Mars I’m sure it’ll be the rarest of all commodities there too. When Spanish Conquistadors were searching for the fountain of youth perhaps they found it but didn’t recognize it because it was flowing with this stuff—the stuff dreams are made of. The stuff every penny spent and every ounce of energy is given for. This is why every lie is said and every destructive act taken. It is the secret of life. It is the doorway through which love, compassion, empathy, confidence, strength and honesty await. When you are content you need no one’s approval or validity. You need not be right or convince anyone of anything. You are secure in your position and in your weaknesses knowing that they too are changing. It’s ok to be wrong when you’re content. It’s ok to not have all the answers. You become someone who takes in each and every moment, who can listen, who can feel and reason.
Contentment does not equal numb.
These two images are of the same boat in the same bay at high and low tide. Together they represent peace, tranquility at both high and low times in life.
About five years ago I was driving by this scene and the bay was at low tide. I stopped because it looked so cool but the boat tilted to one side on the sand with all the mud around looked disturbing. “That looks disturbing,” I said to myself. So I decided to come back on another day during high tide and take the picture. A couple months later I planned a trip back and the scene had changed to what I wanted. I am familiar with this area so I know the fog bank should be sitting behind the boat at this particular high tide. It’s one of the rare instances where the scene looked exactly like I had imagined and I set up and took the shot right away and it turned out just the way I had hoped.
After living with this image for a while and finding its place in The Journey Of A Life Redeemed I realized that the work of art was going to need that boat at low tide too. I needed that disturbing image on the backside of the art because contentment isn’t defined by its circumstances. For the next two years I went back to this scene many times during low tide only to be disappointed by the lackluster images I was getting—the tide wasn’t getting as low as I had seen it the first time and it just wasn’t disturbing enough. Finally, after researching and learning that the lowest tide for the year was coming up I got ready and spent the weekend taking photos where I captured this image. I like it. Since I don’t add or subtract any subject matter from my photos I didn’t photoshop a Bigfoot canoeing across the bay for more “disturbancy“. It’s a lovely image and it was worth all the effort it took to get it.
I have experienced contentment once during my life. I have always wanted to be content, just once. I prayed that someday I could find that peace and awareness during a storm. Just once mind you, that’s all I was asking for. Just keeping it real. No expecting a life changed forever after some near death catastrophe, my head’s too big for a halo. Just once, is that too much to ask? Then in 2006 it happened.
I wasn’t supposed to be driving that night but I found myself taking a 1600 mile round trip to pick up something that the shop couldn’t figure out how to ship (after several failed attempts). I wasn’t supposed to be driving and it wasn’t supposed to be snowing. Late at night a couple hundred miles from home I watched tiny flakes coming down. No problem, when it starts sticking I’ll pull over and lock in the hubs and put my F250 in four wheel drive. The highway was mostly empty and being a cautious driver I was happy to let the occasional car pass and when I did see the tiniest amount of accumulation I let my foot off the gas and before I could touch the brakes my truck started whipping left to right and back again like the hand of God had mistaken my white truck for a salt shaker and was trying to dislodge the last bit of salt. Then I started going round and round, my headlights lighting nothing but dark sky. Finally I came to a standstill in the middle of the highway directly facing the ditch which had been on my right. “No problem,” I said, “I’ll just pull over and lock in the hubs.” I checked to make sure I was still in “D” for drive and in the blink of an eye a strange man was screaming at me, “DON’T MOVE. WE’VE TIED YOUR HEAD DOWN BECAUSE WE THINK YOU’VE BROKE YOUR NECK!”
Now you would have thought this would be quite alarming but all I could think was, “why is this strange man hovering above my steering wheel and why is my window down? I don’t remember rolling my window down.” Then I started noticing all the blood and broken metal and glass. Apparently I never saw the semi-truck and trailer driving down the highway coming from the opposite direction that T-boned me directly in the drivers door which had now pinned me in causing more than extensive damage to both me and my truck. They couldn’t get me out and they dare not move me and immediately after impact a whiteout moved in reducing visibility to near zero and keeping the helicopter from flying in. I, of course, was pleasantly passed out and several vehicles from both directions had to wait because I was blocking every lane (sorry everybody). The ambulance drove through the blizzard and I woke up just as they were arriving on the scene. I think it took several hours for them to get there through the snow. They pried me out of the metal cage leaving my brand new shoes trapped inside. During the whole (amazingly slow) ride back to the hospital the ambulance crew kept asking me, “how did you survive?” I kept replying, “what happened? Was I in an accident?”
The ride back was very painful and I had the wherewithall (one word) to realize that my life was going to be quite different for a while but with everyone on the scene in a panic for me and the ambulance crew shaking their heads the entire time and asking how I survived I was just fine, thank you very much. This incredible peace filled me and while in tremendous physical pain and minus one truck and one new pair of shoes (at this point I was still banking on that elk pepperoni in my lunch box) I knew beyond any doubt that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
This was it! This was contentment and I knew it! Perfect peace of mind amongst the chaos and I was so happy. At the hospital the doctor told me, “you’re too nice to have just been in an accident.” To which I replied, “dog fits door for you.” (Concussion was one of the injuries).
I still have a broken collar bone as a reminder of that time that I experienced perfect contentment. Now if I could just be content when my tire goes flat or I’ve already poured the cereal but now there’s no milk. When big things happen and you’re overwhelmed you can sit back and relax, there’s nothing you can do now anyway. It’s those little things that get me, those things I’m supposed to have control over, or those people I try to have control over and they’re just making things so difficult. Don’t they know that I’m the one who holds all knowledge? Don’t they know I hold the patent on wisdom? They continue to fail in their recognition of my greatness and I’ll have to add that to their to-do list. Where was I? Oh yes—as I journey down the path of my own healing I see glimpses of peace ahead. More and more I hear its whisper beckoning me to the next step.
P.S. A few weeks later a friend and I went back to the truck to retrieve my new shoe. He was a strapping young man training to be an ambulance person himself and while I stood by, um, encouraging him, you know, for support, he wrestled with that shoe. He tried and tried but it was so encased in metal we gave up. Funny thing is, my foot was in that shoe and it was one of the few things that wasn’t injured.