Collecting little snippets of contentment.

And finding "our thing".

Photo by Gaurang Alat on Unsplash

My daughter and I have been going to a little French cafe in our town every Saturday morning for the past month. In a few hours, I will have consumed my 4th cappuccino sitting at a little table where I can hug the stranger next to me, due to how closely the tables are placed.

I won’t, obviously. I only write that because it’s an anomaly where I live in the US.

But I imagine it’s like that in a lot of French bistros and cafes, where space is a little harder to come by. And it’s this sense of closeness and community that keeps us coming back. And the croissants.

It’s weird to sit there, talking to my daughter about middle school going-ons, while trying not to eavesdrop on the group of friends sitting next to me talking about the what they’re planning to do after graduation. I don’t know them, but I’m excited for them.

The first time we came here, it was on a bit of a whim. We sat at the counter after ordering a cappuccino and almond cookie for me, a ham and swiss croissant with an iced latte for her. As we sat on little red stools at the counter and sipped our drinks, she declared that she loved it there, that she felt so grown up. She didn’t finish the iced latte, but she left with a determination to try something new next week.

She has since discovered an iced mocha and we have moved from counter stools to the small tables that line one wall.

I have spoken a lot about contentment lately, mostly in relation to clothes, but I want to touch on general life contentment too, and how my simple Saturday morning excursions to a little French cafe tie into that.

Before starting my no buy year, our Saturday morning excursions generally involved the Starbucks drive-thru, followed by stops at my favorite consignment shops. It was just the thing that I had always done and once my daughter was old enough to be interested in that, she tagged along. It became the thing that we did, but it wasn’t “our thing”. For a few months after starting the challenge, I struggled to find a new thing for us, something that we would both enjoy that didn’t revolve around shopping. My daughter has loved Paris since she was seven and I remembered that there was a little French cafe nearby that I had went to a few times but it’s a little out of the way, so I rarely thought of it.

Sitting in this little cafe, across the table from my best friend, I feel true contentment. I feel connected. I feel like we’ve found “our thing”.

And I wouldn’t trade this moment for any trip to the consignment shop or item of clothing in the world. Is that when you know you’ve reached the summit…when you can’t imagine anything else that could make you feel any happier than you do in the moment?

I guess I’ve written this as a reminder to find little ways to add contentment to your daily life. Find those little snippets of contentment and add them all up until you can fill as many waking moments as possible with them.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes - I already have everything that I really need.'

- Dalai Lama

What little snippet of contentment have you found recently?