Deep-seated contentment.

I conclude that the deep-seated contentment that invades one’s being unexpectedly from time to time (as happens to me not infrequently) cannot be manufactured by our own efforts; it arrives out of the blue as a gift.

A certain amount of pleasure can certainly be conjured by the application of human skill, such as the ability to create and then enjoy a good meal (calamari followed by pheasant ravioli in a rustic broth then finished off with a light, zesty lemon posset with strawberry shortbread). However, the deep-seated contentment that I am talking of is a state of blessedness that takes the recipient by surprise when he or she has applied no effort other than to make himself or herself available to such a gift.

Surely you have experienced blissful moments such as this when contentment comes calling without an appointment? I was discussing this very thing as the sun was setting this evening with everyone’s favourite Dane (no, not Sandi Toksvig). Friend Kierkegaard and I sat communing in my back garden over a generous goblet of Pugliese wine. We had to sit out of doors because he wanted to puff away on one of his infernal cigars that my wife detests.

He confided in me that he, from time to time, experienced extreme well-being that was not predicated on any action he had taken – he was just blissfully happy. He described it thusly, “My body felt weightless, as though I had no body, precisely because every function savoured its own complete satisfaction, every nerve delighted in itself and in the whole, every beat of my pulse and all the inner restlessness only memorialised and defined the joy of the moment. My walk was a soaring, not like the flight of a bird that cuts through the air and leaves the earth but like the billowing of wind over a field of corn …..”

He even claimed that all existence seemed to be in love with him in that rapturous moment, but that it came not at the behest of his beckoning – he just awoke in that blessed state. Of course the bliss dissipated just as inexplicably, the gift was withdrawn.

Our contemplation of deep-seated contentment inevitably led us into the simple complexities of the first Psalm, “Happy the man”, and in no time the wine was gone and the warmth of the long-setted sun was withdrawn. I bade Kierkegaard goodnight and went inside where my wife ordered me to take a shower and change my clothes to rid myself of the stench of cigar smoke.