How can a person be content with their lot in life?

Answer 1

How indeed? I have always said that contentment is death. But there are ways to be content with one's lot. The Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition (OED2) defines 'content' as you use it here as "Having one's desires bounded by what one has (though that may be less than one could have wished); not disturbed by the desire of anything more, or of anything different".

So to be content is to feel that there is nothing else that one wants, and to have no ambition to achieve anything new. To me it seems essentially negative. The feeling of contentment might have its genesis in a belief that one has no rights to hope for more than one has. It might be further extended in some cases to the practice of religion - being content to leave all in the hands of God. This is a way to be content. These extensions that I suggest do not follow strictly from the OED2 definition, however. I make them only to allow an answer to the question, which presupposes that there is a way to be content with one's life. For me, the most important thing about being human is being discontent, wanting something more or something different or something better. It is to be the best person I can be, always knowing that there is always room for improvement, no matter what I am now. For me, to be content is to be effectively dead. For me, the price of being content is a kind of death. But it is a very personal matter. One must make one's own life. It is good to find out how other people feel. I hope you get many more answers to this question, and that from among them you are able to find something that suits you. So many of the important questions are like that. The closest (so they feel) spiritual philosophers feel is the meaning of life is to learn and appreciate Love and forgiveness. Try it.