Satisfaction

~Irish cows off the Dingle Peninsula 

Human beings have many inherent flaws. One of our short comings is we have insatiable appetites for just about everything we deem appealing. If we have a decent place to live we want a better place to live. When we have a used vehicle we want a better newer vehicle. A 36" TV makes us want a 48" TV and the 48" suites us fine until we walk through Walmart or Best Buy and notice the 60" model, and so on.

This insatiable appetite for more and better often times pertains to the people in our lives as well. It's probably safe to assume that when people get married, most of the time they do so with the intent of their marriage being permanent. Often times, however (they say around half), after some time goes by and the bliss wears off, a lot of married people apparently find themselves wanting a better spouse. I doubt many would admit it, but if they were truthful with themselves they'd probably agree with my conjecture. I'll be upfront that this is in fact merely conjecture on my part as I have no experience personally with trading-in a spouse or shopping for a new one. I'm also not judging anyone who is or has: there are likely myriad reasons why people are unhappy in their marriage. Ultimately though, when the dust settles, I'm betting most divorces occur because at least one spouse came to the conclusion...they could do better.

On this subject of being satisfied with what we have, I think we can learn from the cow. Of all earthly creatures, the cow seems more content than most with what it has. If you observe the midwest cow, the northern cow, and the cow that lives by the sea, each of these cows seems equally content. Who knows for sure what a cow is thinking, but to me they all seem to be OK with what they've got. If that's true, then we should strive to be more like the cow. And if we did, there'd be fewer reasons to lock our doors at night and wars would not exist. But then again, neither would Walmart or Best Buy.