How to Construct a Contented Life

My smug happiness annoys some people. That's fair. Their neurotic misery sometimes annoys me. Newsflash: I'm not going to give up my inappropriately bubbly bliss to make whiners more comfortable. Not gonna happen. Yet, I do feel a moral obligation to reveal those secrets of contentment I unintentionally and undeservedly stumbled upon. Here goes.

Many people construct their lives like New York skyscrapers. Each essential part of life is a separate building project. Let me explain. While their financial lives may soar to lofty heights (think Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton), their marital, physical, and spiritual health may remain an undeveloped wasteland or a demolition site (think Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton).

In this superficial world, it's easy to neglect the unquantifiable aspects of a balanced life, until an overdose, a heart attack, or a divorce demands all our attention and renders all our well-built projects moot. So, how do I now avoid such boom and bust cycles that devastated a majority of my earliest construction effort and still torment a majority of the miserable folks I know?

Basically, I've given up erecting New York skyscrapers (and casinos and whorehouses) to specialize in duplicating the ancient Maya pyramid. Here's the blueprint for aspiring builders. The pyramid has four levels. Starting from the foundation level, they are faith, family, fitness, and finance. The object is not to build a tower with as many floors as possible. The object is to make these four levels as unmovable, unshakable and uncrackable as possible.

You can build whatever little bamboo and palm frond shrines you want on top your pyramid. If you have time and resources left over for yoga, chess, cats, dogs, marijuana, fashion, skydiving, or blogging, knock yourself out. However, don't forget the four life foundations are codependent, so the instability and eventual collapse of one will bring all your temples crashing down. The big problem with my youth and my miserable friends is not the hobbies. It's the insistence upon pursuing our preferences before we've laid the rock solid pyramidal foundation for a secure contented human life, as inscribed in the master plan of the universe.

I've never met a person who had reasonably solid faith, family, fitness, and finance who was desperate and miserable, even without a car or a TV or a cell phone. "But I don't have faith in a god!" Yes, you do. The question is whether your god (be it materialism, veganism, Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber) is worthy of being that foundational pyramid stone. "But I don't have true love and my unstable miserable machismo and feminist friends say I don't need a partner!" Go back and read paragraph one or go back and commiserate with them.

All the lame and boring and effeminate church services I was forced to sit through as a child would've been worth it had I only gleaned and heeded the simple story of Jesus that a wise man builds his house on the rock and a foolish man builds his house on the sand and the storms of life then separate them into owners of a pyramid or owners of a rubble pile.

If you're currently following (or soon will follow) that master's master plan, you share (or soon will share) my bliss, and you'll easily get over my annoying smugness. To your happiness! Now, I must go share the love from far above, from just behind a hot woman half my age and twice my chest measurement. God give me strength as I dutifully tread the weary path laid out before me.