{easy contentment}

i've finally figured it out, i think. it came to me while i was walking down 13th toward the park for the first night of folk festival, kicking at rocks and picking at a hangnail on my thumb. my brain was sparking and fizzing and short-circuiting and every blood vessel was pumping twice as hard, twice as fast as usual.

live music. it gets me all wound up. i've never thought about why before, because i just assumed that that's what live music does. to everyone. like, sun makes you hot, caffeine makes you jumpy, live music gets you all wound up.
but then i found out that that's just not true; that there are people in the world who would just as soon sit at home and pet a cat as go to a show. {it's true, i met a person like this the other day.}

but the point is not that.

the point is that as i turned the corner onto retallack street and glanced behind me at a man pushing a stroller with, presumably, a baby inside, i realized all at once why live music is so appealing to me.
it's like this:

i believe that it is completely possible to be perfectly content in whatever life stage or situation you find yourself in. i also believe that this is not a natural leaning for most people, that most human beings spend their entire life trying to be/get/do something they are not/have not/haven't done. contentment takes work. it's something you learn and strive towards, even when life doesn't hand you exactly what you want on a silver platter. {i would even argue that perfect contentment is sometimes more perfect when you haven't gotten what you wanted in the first place, but learn to be content without it.}

but.

i have found a little pocket of time where i am completely and perfectly content without even meaning to be, without even thinking about it. where my face just smiles by itself and i couldn't be put off if i tried. it doesn't matter what stage of life i'm in or what is going on in the minutes, hours, days, before or after. it's like a bubble in the ocean, a tiny little moment with none of the things inside of it that fill everything outside of it.

and that, in case you're just not following, is when i'm sitting right in the middle of a big cloud of notes and chords, watching the music being made right in front of me, shoulder to shoulder with a lot of other people who feel the same way about it. my mind, which never stops running, stops running. i can't talk loud enough to carry on a conversation, so i don't. it's like being asleep, but in a much more awake way.

and so that night at the festival, as i looked up at the stars and imagined the sound waves crashing up and out into the night sky, i savoured the easy contentment and remembered to say thank-You for it.