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Health and Wellness

Finding True Contentment

Recognizing beauty in your slightest smile.

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Finding True Contentment
Colin Sullivan

I stare down to see the water crash below me. I over look too many miles of water to even fathom how many I am truly seeing, although I know I could figure it out with a simple math equation. I see straight ahead to be amazed by all the world has to offer me. I look beyond the cold water below me to focus my eyes on the blend of colors falling far beneath my view. I become so locked up in this moment. I begin to notice the slightest and the most defined things around me. I watch as the mother falls into a slight sleep with a jacket covering her from the continuous breeze, with a sense of pure joy. To then see the man drinking a bud light with the ever so truthful smile resting upon his face, the crowd of people getting all to sing along as they cheer on birthday wishes, a man giving love to women beneath his arm, a young daughter learning from her father, and all the innocent children's faces as they light up with the screen beyond them or the temporary smile of their parents. I notice your eyes as they meet mine, after escaping to the beauty the world has to offer, to share with me a million unspoken words. I see the eyes of so many, so many that are in an irreversible pleasure, as yours also hold just this. I seek no more than this moment.

I seek no more in the world than living right here in a moment of pure contentment. It is a time where we sit back to listen to the birds fly past, we allow our eyes to become weak to what the sky has to offer us, we allow our hearts to lay here, to be with us rather than all our worries. We put our hearts with our brains now, we allow them to become mingled between one another; to gain a new state of mind. I watch as the sky changes, as the picture that has been painted for me fades into another state at which my brain cannot truly understand. This moment will allow an escape for us.

We escape from the terror that trespasses into our contentment. We are able to live here in the beauty that our eyes are all sharing for only a few more minutes. We step off to the solid ground to be awoken with the terror of the 21st century. We step off to the solid ground to be reminded of the problems we share at home, to the problems we will face at work, and to the problems that not just we as individuals, but we as a whole, will have to overcome tomorrow. This step allows for the lives being put into danger, for the differences that will never be resolved, and for the mess we have created to be revisited again, to become apparent in the eyes of those who just saw all the beauty this world has to offer. We are fooled into thinking that we have created something beautiful, for we haven’t. The world has created something beautiful, and we have done everything to make this beauty intangible. It seems impossible to witness, and to be within, such a moment of beauty, of true contentment, to then be thrown into a world where it seems that these moments only happen ever so often. These moments do happen ever so often, so be within them. Be within the times that you are content, where you have a sense of happiness that overcomes you, that also embodies this sense of sadness. Where this sadness has been created because you have failed to be this happy before. You then will recognize and truly take it for what it is; the slightest but most meaningful smile upon your face.

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