Perfectly Content

Just now, it happened—a moment of pure, perfect contentment:  I'm sitting on my balcony.  The sun is shining.  Fluffy white clouds float in the blue sky.  It is warm but not hot.  The breeze is low and languid carrying the faux promise of spring and a rogue scent of freshly baked scones.  I have a fine cigar in one hand and a glass of mead (no, really, mead) in the other.  And it hits me: I am, at this moment, perfectly content.

This doesn't happen often and, when it does, it doesn't last long.  Soon I began thinking that I have yet to solve a thorny plot problem in my hopefully soon-to-be novel-in-progress and that my web site needs updating.  The sun, the clouds, the breeze remained, but my perfect contentment dropped from 100% to a paltry 80.

But let's face it, that's still pretty good; when was the last time you felt perfectly content?  Can you even remember?  That's the other ingredient of being perfectly content—recognizing when you are.  You have to be quick, you have to know yourself and, in many instances, you have to lower your standards.

Being perfectly content doesn't mean everything is perfect; it never is.  It's simply a moment, however fleeting, when everything is flowing in the right direction.  It doesn't have to be—and in fact, rarely is—a grand epiphany, but more of a quiet realization that, if someone ran up to you at that moment and demanded, "Is anything wrong? Is there anything you need?" you wouldn't say, "well, I'm a bit cold, and this drink tastes sorta funny, and there's a mole on my butt that I'm a bit concerned about."  You would, instead, respond with a definite "No" to both questions.

I'm sure I experienced this in America.  I don't recall being particularly malcontented there but it was so long ago it escapes me.  Maybe I should have taken note of it at the time or, perhaps, it's simply so far in the past I can't recall.  America, itself, sometimes seems like a long ago and far away land to me now (so much so that I have to check local web sites to see what is going on at street level:  Do you know who Amy McDonald is?  What do you call Bin Liners?  Do you use the word "Bespoke"?  Is "Waking the Dead" playing on TV?), which makes recalling a specific PCE (Perfect Contentment Episode) from that time a little like trying to remember the name of the second girl you ever kissed; you might, after a protracted period of introspection, be successful, but it's much easier to recall the most recent.

Such as last night.

We were with friends at our yearly Panto outing. (If you need to swot up on Panto, check out Wikipedia.)  During the sing-along, when the other side of the audience was making their attempt to out-sing our side, everyone in my camp suddenly, in unison and on key, chanted, "WHAT a LOAD of RUB-bish!"

How does this constitute a PCE?  Allow me to explain.

In America, at a basketball match, when an opposing player tries for a basket but completely misses the backboard, the crowd, if they are paying attention, spontaneously chants, "AIRRRRRRR BALLLLLLL!"  Not surprisingly, no one does that here.  Instead, they chant, "What a load of rubbish."  But I wouldn't have known about that had I not recently attended a football game (that'd be a soccer match for you folks playing the US version).

Several times during the match, the fans enthusiastically bellowed this chant.  It was always spontaneous and always in unison (and with good reason; I know nothing about soccer and even I could tell these guys were playing like amateurs).  If the chant was meant to inspire our beleaguered team to victory, instead of merely register the crowd's collective opinion, it didn't work; our side suffered a humiliating defeat in a contest everyone thought was gong to be an easy victory.

But at least I learned about the chant, and, last night, when our side of the audience grew tired of shouting "Oh no you're not!" to the other side's, "Oh yes we are!" we switched, as if on cue, to the 'rubbish' chant, providing me with a rare and complete feeling of belonging; an unspoiled moment of contentment in a day filled with contentment.

As I said, it's not always a grand epiphany; sometimes it's just knowing that things feel right.

So when might I except another PCE to come along?  Well, the sun is still shining, the smell of scones has been replaced by bacon and I'm feeling fairly content right now—though smug also covers it—at having completed an article for my web site.  Okay, it's not the best article I've every written, but I still managed nearly 900 words on, what I am certain you will agree, is a fairly flimsy subject.

That might not constitute a PCE but it comes in at a solid 85%, and compared to a drizzly afternoon stuck inside watching Big Brother, I'll take that any day.