Contentment and Melancholy

It has come to my attention that contentment is in perspective, in seeing what is actually happening, in not being discouraged because the entire picture is not visible right now.

When we first moved to Utah, there was a heavy fog that shrouded the mountains.  For the first few days, we could not see them there at all.  It would have been easy to say the mountains were not there, except for the slope of the road near our house and knowing that we lived in a valley in the Wasatch Mountains.

When the Mormon missionaries greeted us, their bikes emerged suddenly from the very dense fog.  And when they rode away again, they quickly disappeared from sight.

Fog is strange like that, changing our perception of distance as life is happening.

I remember waiting at a bus stop in elementary school, our neighborhood shrouded in a very dense fog.  This, combined with the early morning hour, transformed our everyday corner into a magical wonderland.  Students vanished as they stepped away to venture into the wild unknowns of the distant next stop.  People emerged from the clouds as if from nowhere.

Perhaps transitions have something in common with this murkiness. 

I, personally, have been feeling recently as if I am coming out of a fog, but strangely enough, it takes the emotions time to catch up from their previous state.  It's as if the emotions are still clinging to what could be seen amidst the fog.  Meanwhile, little by little, mountain peaks are emerging as the cloud cover weakens.  The outline of the street is once more becoming clear.  And with it comes the realization that life is not the way I thought it once was. 

For within the fog, I had one way of seeing...but as the sun emerges, I begin to see another.

Only this time it's as if I left one place where the sun shone, drove though a dense fog, and am now driving into a landscape entirely new.  And I won't know what the landscape contains until it comes fully into view.  As it is now, it is still hidden, though bits and pieces here and there give promise of more on the horizon.

The struggle comes in the believing there is more still yet to come.  The struggle comes in refusing to believe what can be seen in the fog is all there ever will be. 

The fog can cover so much.  It can cover a chain of giant, snow-capped mountains.

Transitions can be tricky because so much, at first, is hidden from view.  I used to think that, as an adult, life would follow a particular plan.  That, like a flower-lined path, it would go straight forward to the horizon.  No surprises.  No unexpected turns.  But instead it's more like the fog-covered bus stop when I was small.  The mystery gives a magical excitement to the future, but at the same time, it hides so much of what is coming from view.  People appear to disappear when, really, they are only walking to the next corner.  We catch up with them again when the bus reaches that stop.  We don't know other people are entering our lives until suddenly, with no warning, they emerge several yards in front of us, as if from nowhere, coming towards us from the fog.

So in looking at today, I can see what is revealed for now, but can never claim I know the entire picture.

Perhaps this is part of learning contentment and trusting the future.