The site just asked me, what’s one small improvement you could make in your life? That feels like the beginning of a very long, detailed, vulnerable answer. Maybe that’s why it only asked for 1. So, I’ll think of one.

Should it be a physical improvement (like bigger arms), or an intellectual one (like learning what data centers are)? Maybe emotional? I should probably not overreact so much, probably shouldn’t hyper-focus and ruminate, either. A habitual improvement is the answer, right? I should not watch so much tv, should eat better, should build a deck and finish the wood floors in our dining room. Or maybe I should eliminate so many “should’s.”

Does answering that prompt somehow imply an unhappiness with who I am right now? Can we be both content AND driven to improve?

I just looked it up on the internet and the first result says, no, that we should not be content ever. The guy on reddit reasoned that contentment means we will not move forward. Others say yes, you can. We can be satisfied and ambitious.

Someone named Wong Sr Chin writes, “To attain contentment, you must change the CONTENT of your improvement [that’s clever, isn’t it??] so that it caters more for the needs of your inner being, besides satisfying your outer needs.” Sometimes, people write and talk in such a way that it gets pretty confusing. In short, Wong Sr Chin is advocating spirituality – that any contentment in materiality is ultimately empty. That’s true, despite what advertisements would have us believe – that new car or gambling addiction isn’t the missing piece to our wholeness.

What is the content of my contentment? More important than ‘what’ is ‘why’ I would want to improve. Why do I want to grow or evolve or become anyone other than who I am right now? First, DO I want to grow or evolve or become? And yes, I do. Now, why?

I think we are created to grow. It is our natural state. We are one thing, a seed, say, and we are given the task to become a tree or a vegetable or a bush. If we stay static, we get dull and uninspired, wasting away inside, until there’s just a dim light barely shining. Now the question is, what kind of tree do I want to grow into? Once I answer that, I will work backwards and create the framework. What does that tree do, what is it like, what does it like, what makes up that tree’s daily routine?

I’m very happy with me. I could not always say that, but I can now, and that does not mean that I am a finished product, or that who I am is who I will always be. So, what’s one small improvement I could make? Trees (of any kind) probably don’t grow so big and strong eating Oreos and blueberry muffins, so I could not eat as much sugar.