Oh my gosh, sweat is running down my face faster than I can wipe it off with the tail of my t-shirt.  The shirt is becoming as wet as my face is.  I've been handed a bottle of cold water with instructions to drink it down.  I must look as close to death as I feel.   I plop down into an Adirondack chair that sits in the shade of a very large maple tree and after one more swipe of the shirt over my face to keep the sweat out of my eyes, I relax and take a nice long taste of the cool water.  After about ten minutes of mopping my body and drinking the water, I sense that I will indeed live.  In fact, not only do I think I will live, but it occurs to me that there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be at this moment.  I am content.

Contentment is that ethereal something that sits at the confluence of age and experience.  It is not a given that everyone will achieve it.  In fact I'm not sure it's something you can strive for.  Also it's possible that some people wouldn't recognize it if it fell into their laps.  Contentment could be construed, I am quite sure, as laziness and lack of drive.  It is human and common these days to want more and more of whatever motivates you each day.  But it is that fortunate one that wakes up one day and the desire to accumulate more, to be somewhere other than where you are, to throw out the old for the new, is gone; when that happens and when all that you have, all that you have achieved, all that you are, is enough.  On that day, my friend, you can consider yourself one lucky dog.