Many things are beyond human control.  My friend who surgeons have been cutting at and other oncologists have been pumping full of poisons in an attempt to prolong his life comes to mind.  Woke up one day with a mysterious lump on his backside.  Did you ever hear of soft tissue sarcoma?  I hadn’t.  It’s apparently rare.  The form he has is a rare form of a rare cancer.  They throw darts at a dart board to treat it.   After his first round of chemo the doctor was very serious.

“The tumor has doubled in size,” said the oncologist.  “I think we should try another chemo regime.”

“I think so too, doc” said my friend, sitting uncomfortably on what was left under him to sit on.  They’d told him they’d removed all the cancer when they cut out several pounds of his flesh.  They underestimated cancer’s craftiness.

Why do I type Moment of Contentment and launch right into this horrible story?   Partly my nature and partly to point out what it is.  In the midst of this death by a thousand cuts my friend can still laugh sometimes.  Needs to laugh, more than most.  He has always had a great and infectious laugh too, with a taste for slapstick, the bizarre and the not too drastic misfortunes of others.

When I had the headphones on last night, adding tracks to a mix with a tiny portable USB keyboard, and I’m playing drums, bass, electric piano, more percussion by hitting the small keys of a flat little keyboard that weighs a few ounces (and cost $50– the Korg nanokey 2, if you’re interested) I had a thought of my friend, a great musician who nimbly tickled the ivory with Fred Flintstone fingers and how this little keyboard might be the best present he could receive (assuming, of course, that the neurological damage produced by the chemo still allows him to play) .  

I’m talking about the moment of contentment where we are doing exactly what feels best to us.  The moment we wouldn’t change anything, or, like when writing here when we can change exactly and only what we don’t like and leave only what we do like.  

Not every moment of contentment produces something to share, there are things like letting a cool breeze blow across your face on a hot day, closing your eyes, with relief caressing your face.  There are all the little things we do that produce nothing but a moment of contentment.   These moments are nothing to sneeze at, especially given the world we live in today.

Now back to our regularly scheduled headaches…