Seeking a Cure for Discontentment

“Ich wandle still, bin wenig froh, Und immer fragt der Seufzer: wo? Im Geisterhauch tönt’s mir zurück: “Dort, wo du nicht bist, dort ist das Glück!””

I wander, silent and joyless, and my sighs forever ask: Where? In a ghostly whisper the answer comes: ‘There, where you are not, is happiness!’

Above lies an excerpt from Georg Lübeck’s Der Wanderer. I found an arrangement of this poem my junior year of high school and just fell in love with this dark and sultry piece of music. At its climax, it is filled with this boundless nostalgic joy that comes tumbling down in this last stanza at the realization of what can never be. Resignation is the only word that can describe the ending of the piece as themes of solitude and loneliness lie unresolved.

When I solemnly reflect on the self-image I have created up until this point, it is sobering to realize that it looks much like the wanderer of Lübeck’s work. It is of this individual who has struggled with these themes of solitude, othering, and discontentment. Now when I say this, I do not mean to create this dark, Edgar Allen Poe-esque image of perpetual sadness and melancholy. I often find and experience joy and I’m happy to share that increasingly, the emotional state I’m in is of contentment and joy; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the past, and up until recently, I held a very permissive attitude of discontent. As many others do, I can easily shift the blame to the cultural attitude that arose with consumerist-focused advertising in the 1950’s. I can say that the culture within which I was inculcated is to blame, but to do so is to remove my own responsibility in the matter, and my own participation in digging the hole. Looking back, I find that discontentment was initially a comfort that held at bay the fear of living this life bereft of meaning, lost in mediocrity if even that could be attained. This discontentment with life meant that I had a tether to living a meaningful life, and with the divorce of my parents it was also a means of hope. It was a defensive reaction so as to maintain a hope of reconciliation or simply, that the idea of a family as I knew, wasn’t lost.  Discontent began as this instinctive and jealous reaction to protect a hope that life would get better.

As I grew and moved on to college, it had already taken a strong root in my heart. I would strongly hold onto bitterness and upset, disabling me from moving on to and acquiring happiness with my hands already full. I often commiserated with those that would listen, about my roommates or boss or whatever it was that I couldn’t tear my eyes from. An eye that looks only for what is wrong will find only what is wrong, it will find only upset and thus perpetuate unhappiness. Many a time, I excelled at being a downright unpleasant person because I refused to be comforted or contented.

At the same, again like the wanderer, struggled with this idea of home and couldn’t find the ability to be content with where I was at. For so long in Colorado, I dreamt of getting out and living the classic ‘big-city life’ and then my senior year at NYU, I couldn’t wait to get out of the city and just get back home to the country. I missed my family, I missed my mountains, I missed nature that wasn’t planned out by some bureaucrat in an upscale office. Then I graduated and got home and missed friendships, rainy afternoons in a café on West 4th, people that understood my passions. Perpetually my heart was never with me. Even now, I think about home and my heart is torn between the two, feeling as though to choose one half of myself is to reject the other. I had almost resigned myself to living a life filled with this ever-present longing for a greener grass on the other side. Little did I know that the grass is greener where you water it.

It is surpassingly easy to be upset and discontent on the World Race. Training camp was sleeping in rainstorms hoping that the rainfly on your tent was sufficient and bucket showers to clean off the mud. I’ve seen some of the same people every single day for the past 7 months (shout out to Jaden and Michael), privacy is nonexistent, and our budget is less than meager. I mention all these facts not to garner sympathy or highlight my strength in getting through it all, but rather to exemplify the surpassing goodness of God. I’m not happy because of this clichéd concept that I now know Christ, so life is magically better. I’ve known about Him all my life, I’ve developed a relationship with Him not too long ago, I’ve somewhat recently started to live as He did, and now I’m starting to see as He does. I used to think that discontentment was the antithesis to contentment and now I’ve come to find that it is more rather the opposite to gratitude. Through it all have I forgotten the blessings that enable my life, from simple material items like clothing, to the loving relationships of family and friends. The amount of support I’ve found in those of y’all who read my posts, those who donated out of belief in what God is doing through me, those who’ve ventured on this race that I get to call friend. The longings I have for family and home would continue to be unanswered were it not that the Lord has already answered them and will answer them fully still in His timing. In Him, I count precious that which He has given me, and even more so the love that has bestowed them upon me. While I persist still as a wanderer on the World Race, I’ve found my own ending to Lübeck’s  work:

Hier, wo ich bin, hier is das Glück.                Here, where I am, is happiness.