We just had one of those weekends where nothing much was planned, which meant we went into a state of productive panic. We looked up and saw a clearing! A field of opportunities, unscheduled plots of time, where we can finally tackle outstanding house projects.
Instead of approaching it one square footage at a time, start and fully finish one section before going onto the next, we blew our sod. Tried to do way too many projects at once, plow the whole damn field with a crappy weed whacker in a small window of time. Which meant we never fully checked a box. Now our house looks like a field of unfinished shrapnel. The crops are pulled up but we didn't have time to pat it back into the ground, all the farming tools and equipment are left out, dust is still kicked up into the air like the aftermath of a battle. A battle we lost ... the Great Battle of Time.
All we had to do was fix the espresso machine, go grocery shopping, and donate a bag of kids toys and clothes. Somehow more kids clothes and toys were ordered and the bag of donations hasn't moved (apparently most childcare centers want "donated items to be new" ... wait ... explain). We're still low on toilet paper but we wound up with a free frozen turkey we don't need. The espresso machine IS fixed so that's good. All the projects, donations, and grocery attempts were so high detailed, over ambitious, and came with detours that led us down a slippery slope of side projects. We came out of that weekend with more house projects on our list - just to finish and clean up the last ones.
The ONLY thing that was scheduled this past weekend was a kid's birthday party. A two hour birthday party. Totally doable. Five hours later we're leaving the party with our child contorting and melting into her booster seat, like an inflatable with a hole in it. The air pressure leaked out so dramatically she propelled around the backseat of the car. It was a dopamine drop like I've never seen. Because apparently after way too many hours at a psychedelic arcade in a Bellevue strip mall, where she played every imaginable game, and had multiple tries on each one until her determined 6 year old white knuckled and dimpled fists won, she still wasn't satisfied. She wanted a certain cat stuffy.
Oh just get her the cat stuffy you say?? WELL, the cat stuffy was at the very bottom of a claw machine game. The biggest glass cased scam ever, trying to lure your child at every supermarket store front near you. She was sliding her card on that thing so many times she looked like an old lady on a bender, playing the slot machine.
At that point, no amount of persuasion or logic would work. "You can't even get the stuffies at the top! What makes you think you can get one from the bottom?" "Look around, no one has ever gotten a single stuffy out of these machines. It's not going to happen!" OR "Noemie, look around! Everyone from the party went home. You're the ONLY one still here!" So yeh, after this past weekend, we're all feeling defeated. Defeated by an actual claw machine and life's proverbial claw machine. Being too ambitious, expectations were too high, only for our claw to drop it in the end. Too much to carry.
I heard something recently that really stuck with me and was really apparent after this weekend: the difference between "happiness" and "contentment." "Happiness" is something we hear a lot as THE emotional state we want to arrive at. The biggest problem with "happiness" is that it is seen as a place that is achieved. It can only happen "when" we get to a certain point. I will feel better "when" I finish all the house projects... or "when" I get that cat stuffie at the bottom of the bottomless claw pit of despair. The problem with that is you can move the "when." So once you think you've achieved happiness, that post can easily be moved. Like the lesson of the story, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." I saw this with my own eyes as my 6-year-old was beaming and squealing experiencing a VR headset for the first time, yelling, "this is the best thing EVER!" Only to rip them off to run off to find the next best thing ever. That goal post was running around that arcade place like a gopher tearing up a putt putt course.
We would be way better off if we focused on contentment. Which is a state that we've already arrived to and already exists. A feeling of having enough. Dr. Marc Brackett, PH.D., is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Child Study Center. He believes we should all be striving to be content. We should be changing our language around our children to help them find contentment instead of happiness. This is of course different than having drive and ambition. We can still be driven while still noticing when we're content during our day. It can actually help us achieve our goals in a realistic way. Goals will feel more attainable and give us a clearer path to get there. As opposed to this weekend, where we all moved through levers, slides, and lights of happiness and like a pinball machine. Never completing because we never feel complete.
If you want to hear more from Dr. Marc Brackett and how he sees emotional intelligence, this is one of my favorite podcasts.
This week, I want to play with the idea of contentment, not in a way that feels like you're settling. Mastering an ambitious move, but dissected into doable movements. Understanding that in all the little subtle movements and wobbles, you are arriving at a stronger place. It's not "when" you finish a challenging move perfectly that you are stronger. It's the shaky process in between. Unlike a claw machine that tries to grab it all at once and ends up with nothing, we will grasp one thing in our tank at a time. Hold onto that one thing strongly and do it effectively. Instead of rushing into a progression, allow yourself to fully grasp the move you are in before jumping ahead. I think this is such an important practice as we head into the holidays, feeling present and content with what's in our hand, not constantly hungry and chasing whatever slips from our claw.
Because as I sip my afternoon espresso right now, I feel content in knowing we did fix the espresso machine.
Excited to make your bodies sweat, smile, and feel content with content.
XO,
Celeste
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