Tao Te Ching 80

If a country is governed wisely, its inhabitants will be content….Since they dearly love their homes, they aren’t interested in travel….People take pleasure in being with their families, spend weekends working in their gardens, delight in the doings of the neighborhood. And even though the next country is so close that people can hear its roosters crowing…they are content to die of old age without ever having gone to see it.
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As usual, there is more to this chapter than is quoted here. It should be read in its entirety, but there’s enough here to glean both a gross and a subtle point. The gross point is political – one might conclude that we aren’t governed wisely in America. We seem a little shy of contentment; many of us don’t find the doings of our neighborhood all that delightful; and most of us seem to be in love with the allure of traveling to other countries. I’ll leave it at that.

The subtle point is that this chapter isn’t about our “country” – it’s about our life. If our life is being governed with wisdom, then we are content with our life as it is. We aren’t seeking greater pleasure, enjoyment or fulfillment in the material world around us. We’re content to stay “home”, where we have what we have and it’s enough, no matter what we have. In this contentment, we don’t take flights of fancy to the realms of other, hopefully better relationships; other, hopefully more remunerative places to work; other, hopefully bigger homes and cars; other, hopefully finer clothing and jewelry; other, hopefully more contented lives.

Hope is a place that is defined by fear – the fear that we aren’t enough; that we don’t have enough. Hope is an attachment to something better in the future, just as fear is an attachment to something worse in the past. Hope and fear are opposite sides of the same coin; we can’t have one without the other. Said another way – they are the same thing.

Many of us have taken vows to love, honor and cherish, for better or for worse – a vow that should apply to life, not just to marriage. If we seek contentment, we need to know that we already have it, right here at home.