Tuesday 9 October 2018

Contentment

There’s a man in this area, perhaps around forty years old, who collects car numbers. All day every day, rain or shine, he can be seen with his pencil and his notebooks, carefully writing them all down. I stopped and chatted to him today, and he told me he’d been doing this for twenty-four years (“twenty five next year”). On my way home it set me thinking.

Here is a man who it seems is perfectly happy. He appears to have no ambition, apart from more car numbers (and goodness knows, there are plenty of those, even though he must count some of them many times over). He probably gets up every day, looking forward to another day of....collecting car numbers, enjoys what he does, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t sleep well at night. He doesn’t engage easily in conversation, but seems happy to be on his own, and while no doubt he has at some point been labelled as “special needs”, he appears to need very little.

Obviously someone somewhere is paying for his everyday, not so special needs, but somehow here is a man who seems to have it all. I for one could learn a lesson or two from him...

14 comments:

  1. Sounds like a (mild) form of Asperger's to me. Yes, probably a very contented man who feels comfortable the way he lives, without always striving to "have" or "be" more than that.
    I have never been particularly ambitious myself, and rather have (and use) the same old things for as long as they are useable before I buy anything new. But every now and then, I like to splash out, such as when I bought my bedroom furniture 11 years ago, or swapped my bedroom and living room in 2016, spending a fortune on wallpaper and professional decorating.
    Actually, I think I have it all, too - a job I enjoy, a flat I love, friends and family; if only there could be an easy, fair solution for OK and my living situation!

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    1. 150 km, or two hours by train for me and about 1.5 hours by car for him.

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  2. When I was young I used to do that with train numbers. It's normal. As I got older I started collecting girls phone numbers. I've always enjoyed numbers.

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  3. I imagine all pastimes seem a little odd, weird or dull to those who have no interest in them.

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    1. You mean like golf and stamp collecting,
      Artsy?

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  4. Maybe I'll give it a try if ever I get tired of my current obsessions (like taking a million photos of autumn leaves)...

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  5. I, like many these days, have to work hard and say 'no' a lot in order to keep my life simple.

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  6. I wondered why I didn't originally comment on this and then I remembered that it made me wander off to find old posts I thought written in a similar vein. He who is content is a fortunate person.

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    1. I quite agree, Graham. Searching for happiness is discontentment. I think only serenity is real happiness.

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