Meditating on Contentment

I’m having one of those glorious fall mornings, where I laid in bed and just listened to the rain. I slept in, ate leftovers for breakfast, snuggled with the bulldog, and lingered over multiple cups of coffee. As I ate bites of stuffed pepper (thank you Janet!) I skimmed through one of my favorite cookbooks, trying to find the perfect muffins to make for breakfast tomorrow, and I took a few moments to just be.

When I meditate-- which is much more sporadic than I would like it to be--I mostly find myself focusing on Santosha, or contentment. Just being in the present moment, and knowing that what I have is enough, my life is enough, and being happy where I am, and this isn’t always the easiest thing. Yes, big picture stuff, I’m in love with my job, my dog, where I live, my garden, I love what I’m doing with my life, and my family, and I have been in a place of contentment with all of that for a long time. But no matter how settled I felt, how secure things were, there was always a nagging feeling of “ this is all amazing, but you don’t have anyone to share it with” And I spend a lot of time dealing with that, and struggling through it, and an awful lot of time trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted without having someone else in my life. And what I realized through all of that, was that I have created this life for myself, and have spent my life cultivating what sort of person I want to be, and as a result, I value myself too much to settle for someone who isn’t right for me. True, I have spent a good long while, longing for someone to share my life with… But I have also been really aware that a sense of contentment is not going to come from being with the wrong person. That being alone, and living my on my terms and in my own way and not being willing to settle for less than what I deserve is far better than spending my life trying to work it out with someone who isn’t quite the right fit.

And then, out of nowhere, along came the right fit. After my last blog post I was feeling a bit disenchanted by dating... feeling like I shouldn't have to be that hard... and on a Friday I asked the universe to be blindsided. I asked for someone who was going to surprise me in every way, who was going to remind me that good guys are out there, who was going to completely change the game for me. And literally the next day, he walked into my kitchen. (my work kitchen, anyway)

It’s kind of surreal when all the qualities that you have been looking for actually manifest in one person… I always sort of wondered if my idea of the perfect man was skewed somehow (I probably planned my wedding to Indiana Jones at least a dozen times as a child) or if I had unreal expectations… turns out I didn’t.  He was not at all the person I was expecting, and on paper, his life isn’t anything I was specifically looking for… but when we are together it just makes sense. We just make sense.  And in my limited dating experience I have had the guys who were good on paper, who I had everything in common with, who it seemed like it should have worked out with… and these were the guys who ended up treating me terribly. So yes, It’s true, he isn’t anything that I was expecting,  but he is so much more than what I was looking for… and I’m excited to see where it goes. I know it is still early, but sometimes when life fits, you just know it… so here I am,  actually settling into a complete stage of contentment, and for the first time being 100% sure that I’m exactly where I am supposed to be. And that is a great feeling.