Soulful Sundays: Contentment

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” — Socrates

There once was a Japanese farmer who lived by the quiet code of shikata ga nai—literally, “it cannot be helped.” One night, the man’s only plow mare escaped from its pasture and ran off into the hills. His neighbors came to console him. “How terrible. What bad luck!” they said. The farmer only replied, “Shikata ga nai.” The next day, the horse returned—bringing with it a wild stallion. When the villagers heard, they rushed to congratulate him. “How wonderful! What fortune!” Again, he replied, “Shikata ga nai.” Soon after, the farmer’s son attempted to tame the stallion but was thrown violently and broke his leg. The villagers were distraught. “How awful. Now your son can’t help with this year’s harvest.” Once more: “Shikata ga nai.” A month later, the emperor declared war and sent recruiters to conscript every able-bodied young man in the village. Because of his broken leg, the farmer’s son was spared. But the farmer remained unmoved. “Shikata ga nai.” It cannot be helped.

In the heart of every human being, there is a quiet and constant tension between contentment and striving. They form a yin-yang rhythm that pulses through every layer of life. But it doesn’t stop there. Each pole has its own hidden danger—contentment can curdle into complacency, striving can mutate into obsession. When we lose the balance, life becomes a swinging pendulum of overcorrections. What begins as an instinct for wholeness dissolves into the chaos of chasing too much or settling for too little.

Stillness, gentleness, the sacred mother—these are the forms contentment takes. It is a soft acceptance of the moment, a gratitude not based on circumstance but on perspective. It is the felt grace of God that arises when we stop measuring ourselves against imagined outcomes. But regret makes gratitude nearly impossible. And regret, more often than not, is born from the abundance of options. Many people suffer not from what was denied them, but from the fear that they chose wrong—abandoning their values, betraying their better judgment, or simply doubting themselves. The best antidote for regret comes in two separate doses: accepting the past AND learning from it. We all make mistakes, but mistakes only have power over us when we refuse to integrate them.

Ambition, intention, the sacred father—these carry the pulse of striving. They are the fire that calls us to rise beyond our limitations. They push us to grow, to build, to take responsibility for shaping our lives and our world. It is only through daring greatly that we expose ourselves to failure and the potential sting of regret. Yet this too is part of life’s sacred design. As Nietzsche wrote, “You are not just who you are—you are also who you could become.” Intention is the opposite of passivity. It is desire made conscious. It is the word that creates. It acts, organizes, makes form out of the formless. But without stillness, striving becomes a wheel without a hub—always spinning, never arriving.

These two forces are not adversaries; they are intertwined lovers. Stillness gives birth to intention, and intention carves space for stillness. They are the motive force of existence itself. To be truly content is not to abandon growth, nor is it to cling to it. It is to look toward the future without attachment, to let our hearts be filled not with fear or fantasy, but with a quiet readiness. If we can empty ourselves of our rigid expectations and fill that space with faith—faith that what comes is not always what we want but always what we need—then we meet the moment as it is. Without flinching. Without grasping. With love.

Shikata ga nai. It cannot be helped. And in that surrender, there is true contentment.