The Wit’s Guide to Contentment
Or, the fleeting absence of badness
The secret to happiness is misdirection; aim instead for contentment. Take Patricia Highsmith’s word for it: “A requited love, a check from the publishers, those lead me to contentment. They stave off anxieties, real and imagined, just a while longer.” The definition of the term, the acerbic novelist wrote, was “the absence of things I don’t want rather than getting anything.”
“True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.”
— G. K. Chesterton
When it comes to contentment, no animal can top the cat. As humans keep noticing, felines seem to have it figured out. Muriel Spark said that if she weren’t a Christian, she would formally worship cats. “Nothing restores the soul so much as the contemplation of a cat,” she wrote. “Its contentment is mystical; anatomists have still not discovered what or where the cat’s purr-box is.”
“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”
— George Bernard Shaw
The beauty of contentment is that it implies fleetingness, so there’s no harm in giving in. Are you happy? Well, I wouldn’t mind making a bit more money and perhaps losing ten pounds and finding a better group of friends and maybe getting a dog, but not one who sheds too much. Are you, after a good meal and in the company of people who tolerate your jokes, content? Uh, sure! What’s the harm of saying yes?
“Contentment: The smother of invention.”
— Ethel Mumford
Ah, the potential harm is to your work ethic! If you are content, does that make you lazy? Does it make you stop striving? Would a contented society spurn progress? These are questions any well-trained consumer will ask! But it’s like worrying that all the doughnut shops will close once people learn about the virtues of healthy living. In fact it’s permissible, even advisable, to tap the brakes on all the ecstatic consumption to just exhale.
“There’s an old argument about whether full bellies or empty bellies lead to contentment or revolt: it’s an argument not worth having. The crucial organ is the mind, not the gut. People assert themselves out of an unquenchable sense of dignity.”
— Christopher Hitchens
About 20 years ago, the journalism business was taken over by people who referred to the stuff being churned out in newspapers and magazines as content. This appalled the old school; to them (me!), content was how you described an editor after a lengthy lunch on an expense account. (Don’t worry, the classified ad revenue will more than cover this!) But then everyone adapted and here we are, or so I thought. A recent Wall Street Journal article on why the next James Bond movie is in limbo reports that Barbara Broccoli, the head of the family that owns the franchise, was deeply miffed that an executive from Amazon, the company that bought the rights to distribute the films, referred to 007 as content. “Using such a sterile term,” the Journal reported, “was like a ‘death knell’ to Broccoli.”
“And when that first martini hits the liver like a silver bullet, there is a sigh of contentment that can be heard in Dubuque.”
— William Emerson, Jr.
As with most things, the Buddhists have a pretty good parable for contentment. A confused monk comes across a wise old man carrying a great burden and asks if he knows the secret to enlightenment. The old man puts down his burden and the monk immediately gets it: To be enlightened, just let go! He high fives the old man and is about to race back to the monastery with this breaking news, but then he sees a flaw. “So … now what?” he asks. The old man smiles, picks up his burden, and continues on his way.
OK, technically it’s about enlightenment, but the sandal fits. Because you see, the old man was James Bond and his burden was a burlap sack full of contented cats.
Hooray for the mail
This prodigious stack of Riposte Cards went out the door at long last this week. And yes, that’s Donald Sutherland on the stamp, and no, he hasn’t taken the place of Charles III on our postage. (Not officially, anyway. But note that the late snow-white thespian appears on my Year in Pop Culture News Quiz in the Toronto Star!) These envelopes contain a sampling of both November and December’s premium artworks for paying subscribers, including the following gem. Upgrade to paid today and you too can receive inspiring snail mail from me!
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“The cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.”
— Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) in The Sweet Smell of Success
The next issue of Get Wit Quick will land in your inboxes in 2025, a year that somehow sounds more like the future than any past years. Silence came in a close second last week, so perhaps for a hungover January 2 (wait, still?), that’s just what we want.
Get Wit Quick No. 286 is good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people might just hit the ❤️ below. There’s some decent happiness research on contentment as the answer, btw. This newsletter grew out of my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting, the writing of which was obviously not enough to keep me content. More content = more content!
dear benjamin,
great quotes! some of my faves this week:
“True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Contentment: The smother of invention.”
— Ethel Mumford
thanks for sharing as always!
love
myq