Communique of Unknown Voltage, 7th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Electra): Happiness and joy are overrated. I've found something better.

The problem with happiness is that it's so dependent on external conditions, things of which you don't have control. The pursuit of happiness becomes just that - a pursuit - and one finds oneself endlessly chasing after something that forever seems to be just beyond one's grasp.

Joy is all that and, even worse, it's almost by definition temporary and ephemeral. It's like crack cocaine, and after an exhilarating burst you find yourself craving more, and then finding yourself experiencing unhappiness and craving between those short, transient hits of joy. 

You can have happiness and joy. I'll take the better thing - contentment. Contentment is something totally under your own control - you can choose how you experience present conditions, either with acceptance or rejection. It's your choice if you're content with the present situation or not. It's entirely up to you.

Sure, life throws things at you that can be nearly impossible to accept - death of a loved one, say, or a cancer diagnosis. War or hunger or extreme poverty. But even in suffering, there's still room for recognition that things are the way they are, and that's its still a choice how much additional suffering you're going to impose on yourself protesting the unfairness of it all. It sucks to lose a loved one or to face a critical illness, but one can still accept that those are merely consequences of being alive. Impermanence is not only swift but also an inevitable condition of existence. Contentment is accepting our mortality and not expecting ourselves to be the lone immortal exception.         

Contentment doesn't have the exciting but addictive highs of joy and excitement, but it lasts a lot, lot longer and doesn't have the sugar crash of disappointment afterward. Contentment lasts exactly as long as you choose to experience it.