People around me need me to be strong, reliable, inventive, resourceful, happy. I think - I hope - I'm managing to make a decent attempt at all of these, but inside I don't feel very much of any of them. Yesterday I wrote something about how I envy those who are content with where they are; today I was gardening next door to someone who is exactly that, and yes, I do envy him, and why wouldn't I? He has a good home and a good job, in a place where he feels content and well supported, with his family around him.
And yet for me that could never be enough. Am I wired wrong, somewhere inside? Why, when I clearly want to be content, can I not be? I find myself reminded of the Peggy Lee song "Is that all there is?" - written, I think, by Leiber and Stoller. Everything is ultimately disappointing for Miss Lee, who, I think, sang (and recited) the song so well because it chimed in so closely with something in her own personality.
"You look so much happier these days," people have said to me recently on several occasions. "Oh, I am," I usually reply. True. The pressure is off, I've nothing really to worry about, I do enjoy the things I do, and I am surrounded by good people who love me and support me and sustain me. But, though it surely should be, somehow it isn't enough.
So here's the question really, I suppose: am I the exception here, or the norm? Is it me who's a bit odd - or is the odd one out the content and happy person with a sorted and settled life? The existence of art and music and poetry, or the human desire to push back boundaries in science, or exploration, or sporting achievement, might suggest that it's that ache to have more, to go further, that worm of discontent within us, that is the norm. And that is also, for some of us, the motivation to search for God.
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