Where do you find happiness in your quilting? Is it is the process or a specific part of the process? Or is it in the finished quilt?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between contentment and happiness. Here is what I shared with my newsletter readers last week:
So many of us are always on the look out for happy. We think happiness is the ultimate goal. We are wrong, I see now. Contentment is what we should seek.
Think of it this way. When you have a baby the exhaustion level, physically and mentally, is high. So is the amount of stuff and drudgery in your day. But then the day comes that they genuinely see you for the first time, the day they roll over, the first night they sleep for 6 hours straight, pulling themselves up at the coffee table, crawling, walking, the first word. These milestones are all the happy we desire. They are excitement and pure joy. But they aren't really enough to get us through the day to day, the repetitiveness, the mess of parenting a baby. Unless, of course, we can embrace the naps on our chest again, cleaning the favourite toy of spit up again, the screeching, and even the diapers. Contentment is when we can look at all of that and still smile.
Happy is an exclamation point. Contentment is a smile.
If our lives are filled with nothing but exclamation points it will be fun, sure, but also exhausting. Here's another way to think of it. Imagine your last good vacation, if you can. Was it all adventures - zip lining, horseback riding, spicy cooking classes, the tallest building in the city, surfing lessons? Probably not. But maybe you did one or two really exciting things and then otherwise enjoyed strolling the beach or city streets, reading a book, a delicious bakery where you lingered. If it was all the adventures - the exclamation points - it would be a lot of fun, maybe a bit stressful, and very, very tiring at the end of the day. But those quieter moments, the ones that make you smile and sigh are delightful.
Regular life needs to be a combo of both. However, instead of seeking happiness, we should be looking for what makes us content. More importantly, we should be looking around us and realizing that what we have is good and brings us contentment. You might be surprised at what you see.
Then I was speaking with a lovely lady in my neighbourhood this week, also a quilter. She spoke about how she will look at a finished quilt and wonder just how she got there. Like suddenly it is finished and the making of it has slipped away. Yet the making of it is where her peace is.
Contentment = enjoying the quilt making process.
Happiness = the finished quilt.
So I suppose that now that I’ve thought of it this way, I see my love for the process in an even better light. And it explains my defence of unfinished quilts. I would much rather have contentment, a smile, in my life on a daily basis than the energy of an exclamation point. Don’t get me wrong, happiness is awesome, finished quilts are awesome, but finished quilts only come around a few times a year. Why hang all my joy on sometimes success when I can have peace everyday in the making?
To that end. I did finish a few quilts recently so I was happy to pull out an old, favourite project. I’m jazzed for it and sneak in to the sewing room in spare moments to put together just one more string of Itty Bitty curves. The piecing makes me feel joyful, the work growing gives me all the smiles, and the daily making is 100% about contentment.
