Contentment is a state of happiness and satisfaction, which is close to well-being and what consists of well-being depends on what your interests are. Also as it says in the definition happiness, happiness is not the same for all people on planet earth. Everyone is going to have different meanings of what their happiness is. Contentment is one of human nature’s big things. Contentment is either you being content with life or you are doing things to be content later in life. Everyone is at different stages of their life and they are working to be content with their life. Having this as one of our main driving forces in our life helps us achieve what we want our lives to be. Everyone wants their lives to be different. Some people want the nice things and all the money, while others don’t want that they want just enough money to be happy and happy that they are living. I also think being content with life is being happy that you are alive. You may not have all the fancy things and all of the money but you are alive and well. But human nature kind of just brushes this idea off because we are so busy trying to be the richest and have really nice things. I do not think that is such a bad thing either. Yes, it makes us greedy and it gets in the way but at the same time some of the greatest ideas come out of it. Sometimes it makes you think in ways others would not think and that one idea can change the world. Contentment can either be a bad thing or a good thing on how you look at it. Either you think that being content with life means that you are just happy to be a live or you think that being content is when you are so rich you don’t know what to do with. Neither is a wrong answer, it is really just how you were raised Now people will argue in what they believe in because that’s what philosophy is in a way. Ideas are not the same throughout all mankind.
Contentment has been a thing since the beginning of time. The problem with contentment is that it makes people greedy. Epicurus believes that, “the most pleasant life is one where we abstain from unnecessary desires and achieve an inner tranquility by being content with simple things, and by choosing the pleasure of philosophical conversation with friends over the pursuit of physical pleasures like food, drink, and sex.” I think that us as a society gets really caught up in these other things. We are not content with the simple things in our lives. Humans do not stop at anything to get what they want. We are never content with our lives I feel like. And when we start to feel like we are going in the right direction we keep doing the same thing to get whatever we are searching for in our lives. Even if the thing that we are doing is not a moral thing to do. There was a company called Enron and they were an energy company that became so big, and they were doing immoral things to make money. They were inflating their sales that they didn’t have to make millions of dollars. They were making money off the innocent people that believed that their sales were true. These people were making millions and paying off their accountants to keep the books inflated. They also were putting all of their losses in smaller companies so it wasn’t going on their books. This just goes to show that if humans are offered enough money or they are making enough money they will look past the moral part. If we don’t start enjoying and appreciating the little thing in life like Epicurus says then our lives will not feel complete. That is the biggest problem with contentment in today’s society, becoming so greedy that you become so blind to what you are actually doing is not a good thing. This is an issue that is going to keep growing if we don’t stop to smell the flowers. Really if we as humans do not stop becoming so blind to what we are doing for money then the world will turn into such a not nice place. It has turned us into such a go, go, go society that we do not stop to enjoy the little things in our life. Life is so precious that we get lost in doing the little things. Also, can humans be content with their current situation while still being ambitious? Being ambitious means that you don’t stop till you reach your goal or your dream. But being content means that you are okay with where you are at and that you are satisfied with your situation. I don’t think that we can be content and ambitious at the same time. I feel like if you are content then you are not really ambitious to grow or become better. And if you are ambitious then you are not content with your life. The other problem with contentment is the want and need part. There are big differences between wants and needs for humans. The wants are things such as phones, TV’s, a lot of money, and the needs are things such as food, shelter, water. In modern day society humans get those really mixed up. We get stuck in the rush of if I don’t have it my life will not be as great as someone else’s and I won’t be cool around my friends anymore. When in reality we should be grateful you have these things even if they are not the biggest and most fancy things. There are people in the world with things that we take for granted like our needs. Some people are drinking dirty water and not having food or a nice shelter, but we don’t even think of that because we are too much into being ambitious and not being content with our lives.
Never being content is just human nature I feel like. It is seen all over the world, some more than others but it is still there. You see all the time when some people grow up less fortunate and then end up making it through school and end up making enough money to support their parents and stuff that humans are not content with their lives. There is something in the human brain that says I need to do well throughout school to help my family out one day. Whether that would be a less fortunate individual or a kid that grew up in a wealthy family. They want to do well in things so they make money and they can support for their future families. The contentment issue is a universal thing. I would not say that is a problem because that is the way we are and that is the way it will always be. Humans want to keep striving till they are happy with where they want to be. Some great things come out of it. If you keep working and doing things to make your life better some things will come from it. Things as in finding a hidden talent or just finding something that makes you happy with life and that you are good at. I know there is a lot of back and forth argument on this certain topic but what is not that way. Either you think that contentment is good, okay or just bad. The good is that people keep working for what they want. The okay is that, yeah, they work for what they want but humans do not good things to get what they want. And the bad is that it makes humans really greedy and is making the world a bad place. Things that are related to contentment is happiness. Happiness is really related and intertwined in contentment. Everyone is not really happy with their life and you can see it in their eyes and what they are doing. Everyone has a different vision of happiness and how they go about it to get to their happiness. Aristotle says that, “Happiness depends on ourselves.” Even one of the greatest philosophers in world says that happiness depends on us. It depends on what we want to do and what we take pride in. He also says that, “…a genuinely happy life required the fulfillment of a broad range of conditions, including physical as well as mental well-being.” If we are feeling good and well it helps out or happiness and what we are trying to accomplish during our lifetime. So happiness and content go hand in hand for our drive in life. We will not stop till we are satisfied with our own selves and our own well-being in life.
We as humans experience this issue all the time and we are finding ways to satisfy the want. This is not a need in our lives; it is a want. We want the money and the nice things that come with this issue. We experience this through us just making the decision to further our education. When we make that decision to go to college to get a degree in whatever we want is us not being content with life. We do not need to go to a college to live our lives but we do it so we can grow and open up our possibilities to what we want to do. Also doing well in our jobs to be promoted. We are not satisfied with being in that entry level position because we know we can do more at a higher position. Another is even in sports, any sports. There is so much drive and commitment in these athletes’ everyday lives. They are out in the mornings lifting and working on their bodies, while in the afternoons they are out on the field or court working on their skills. Athletes work every day and push their bodies to the limit because they are not content with their skill level or their body ways. I know this being an athlete there is so much stress and the long days take a toll on you but we live for it because without that sport in our lives we would be like lost puppies. We are trying to figure out how to function on our own without the sports in our lives sometimes. At some point it will stop and we will have to figure out what to do with our time. These are a few ways we experience contentment in our everyday lives. We know we have this issue because of these reasons. We are not satisfied with our lives in different ways. There is really no way of fixing the contentment issue because it is the drive in our lives. Having this drive makes us become who we are and what we want to become.
Contentment as I said can be morally right or wrong. Really it is how you look at it and you want to take it. The moral thing in contentment is to keep working to be content with life. In which that’s how I look at it. People have different ways to look at what is morally right and wrong. So there is no one that can say what is right or wrong. Even some people will say that contentment is just being happy that you are alive and well. And some think that that is the moral thing with contentment. Just the biggest issue is that some people become too greedy and will do unmoral things. Unmoral things such as lying and stealing and not doing right for other people. If we lie, cheat and steal form innocent people that is unjust. If we use our contentment issue to our good we could make the world a better place. Making it a better place is what a lot of people want and what people strive for. If contentment was good such as never being content with life and striving to make the world and your life a better place, then the issue with contentment would not be such a big deal to worry about.
I still think that contentment will be a thing till the end of time. Contentment is not the worst thing that has ever happened to mankind and it doesn’t hurt people in ways that other issues would. Contentment keeps us humans driving forward to things that we want from our life. We want to make our lives better and even make the world better with our ideas. Some of the greatest ideas come from people not stopping when they fail. If we keep pursuing the idea of being content a lot of great things can happen and it can open up doors for us that only lead us down the path we want to go down. Yes, contentment can have its bad side but what cant? There are a lot of other bigger issues that we could be worrying about than a person pursing their dreams to be what they want to be. So in all I think that contentment will help the human race push forward and I thing that it makes life fun and interesting.