Last month, I was in feeling very happy as I welcomed visitors to my first true exhibition of photographs in thirty years, in Toronto. Over the preceding months, I had painstakingly reflected on the message I wanted to convey, and select content that would best reflect it.
Titled Before the Fall, it was intended as a celebration of true beauty. It was a reminder of sorts for adults living in the modern world, of the deep contentment we all once felt, before we outgrew our “childish behaviors”.
The eleven photographs I ultimately selected were all of children, in some of the most economically challenged places on the planet. In spite of that fact, they all exuded contentedness.
Said another way, they lived outside of the “pursuit of happiness” paradigm that dogs the rest of us in the economic West. How? Unlike us, they hadn’t yet fallen from the grace of contentment into which, I believe, we are all born, and in which we remain until we learn to measure ourselves against others, then outsource our happiness to external things, often borne out of competition.
A visitor to the exhibit—a well-to-do patron of the arts, in one of the world’s richest cities—asked why I photographed children. I told him it was because they didn’t fear my lens, or were particularly wary of me; and that I was therefore able to capture something authentically joyful about their lives, which I used as a self-reminder of what truly mattered. I concluded that in spite of having nothing, they seemed deeply content.
He scoffed. “I’m sure they’d like a little more money,” he said as his face seemed to struggle between a smile and a sneer.
It was unsettling.
I smiled weakly.
What could I possibly say to him? He didn’t seem to grasp the concept I was trying to convey with images, precisely so that I wouldn’t have to explain it.
Contentment‘s Origins
Contentment’s story really starts with Diogenes. One of the greatest of Greek philosophers, and a founder of Cynicism, Diogenes is someone whose message we now scoff at like my patron, so much so that we’ve associated it with a psychological disorder.
Per Wikipedia:
“Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog [“kyôn”, in ancient Greek, hence “cynic”]. Besides performing natural body functions in public with ease, a dog will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe. Unlike human beings who either dupe others or are duped, dogs will give an honest bark at the truth. Diogenes maintained that all the artificial growths of society were incompatible with [contentment] and that morality implies a return to the simplicity of nature… In his words, “Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods.””
The Ethiopian and Cuban children in the exhibit seemed to embody Cynicism’s ideals, by default.
The same could be said of children everywhere I encounter them, especially in places the global economy hasn’t yet reached, or corrupted.
Contentment, as the Cynics would have it, came from “rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, and even flouting conventions openly and derisively in public. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions.”
The boy in the photographs that follow, which Instagram keeps warning me every time I try posting them is pornographic and thus shameful, illegal and predatory is—in reality—deeply content, which is the only reason I keep trying to share them.
Content vs. Happiness
I know a number of billionaires, and a considerably larger number of multi-millionaires. All of them have enough to avoid economic struggle. I’d describe some of them as happy, but mostly when they’re “winning”, which is most evident when they are either earning money or spending it. But I’m not sure I’d describe most of them as content. In fact, most of them seem downright miserable to me, in spite of (or because of?) their extreme wealth. What I know is that their lives invariably revolve around gaining, managing, spending and broadcasting economic might to a public against whom they feel they are somehow competing.
By glaring contrast, the children (and even adults, in some cases) that I choose to photograph in places of economic poverty appear unburdened by our entrenched belief that they are supposed to feel lacking: of trappings, of wealth, and of power.
Instead, they don’t seem to give a s**t.
The World Happiness Report concluded in 2023 that for the sixth year in a row, Finland was the happiest country in the world. So much so, in fact, that it was “significantly ahead of all other countries,” according to the report.
Heli Jimenez, one of the people organizing a happiness Masterclass there, led by the always-insightful April Rinne, told Business Insider that “It’s about sharing our culture, our way of life,” then added, “The better word for it in our mind would be content rather than happy — because we are satisfied with our lives.”
That idea—of satisfaction with the status quo of one’s life—is available to everyone without effort. But contentment also poses an existential threat to the global economy. That’s because the latter is fundamentally based on the myth of scarcity: that there’s isn’t enough, and that the only path to happiness is in the pursuit of more: more possessions; more growth; more power; and more consumption.
As Lynne Twist writes in The Soul of Money, “We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of,” before blasting through a list of perceived deficiencies, including fitness, work, profits, power, wilderness, downtime and money; and that we ourselves are not thin, smart, successful or rich enough.
Twist concludes that sufficiency isn’t an amount of something, but rather “an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.”
This last point she makes is a critical one: “being enough”.
In my view, deep contentedness differs from the transient states of joy, happiness and delight in that contentment is an outcome of a mindset that derives from feeling that we and our lives are enough, rather than something to chase, “out there”.
Like the Finns.
And the children I photograph.
Final Thoughts
What, then, can we learn from children, the Finns and Diogenes?
We can understand that contentment doesn’t come from anything external, but rather from the recognition that there is enough, and that we are enough. Contentment is a default state available to all of us [victims of warfare, hatred, persecution, rejection and other man-made catastrophes notwithstanding], by taking the measure of our innate sufficiency as human beings, with gratitude.
As I wrote in Do No Harm, for GEN:
“We destroy the planet and people in the name of profit and winning, because we have given in to the myth of scarcity: where to win, someone else must lose; and so, we wreak havoc on everything and everyone in a bid to come out on top.
This myth is simply not true. There is no limit to the sun, wind, ground heat, or waves. There is no limit to kindness or generosity, to our ability to create shelter and safety, feed and clothe everyone sustainably, or educate and heal every human. The only thing there is a limit to is our willingness to share these things freely; to act with empathy rather than indifference or hatred toward one another; and to make choices that lead to equal, universal access to what are, in truth, limitless things.”
Diogenes sought contentment by rejecting the idea that it came from externalities. He was cynical toward those who rejected the idea of our inherent sufficiency, per se. As a result, he lived—even if it was through self-imposed rigor, because of the unnatural context in which he found himself—not unlike the children my wealthy patron scoffed at, at the vernissage of my exhibit.
Diogenes’ contemporaries scoffed at him, too. We have perverted the message of cynicism to levy it as an insult toward people who don’t accept “the way things are”.
As if.
Brené Brown writes, in The Gifts of Imperfection:
“We seem to measure the value of people’s contributions (and sometimes their entire lives) by their level of public recognition. In other words, worth is measured by fame and fortune. Our culture is quick to dismiss quiet, ordinary, hardworking people. In many instances, we equate ordinary with boring or, even more dangerously, ordinary has become synonymous with meaningless.”
As I explained to those who allowed me to share my art with them, I seek out and photograph children because they haven’t yet learned to fear others’ motives and acts, or their own relative value in the world, as human beings, by virtue of existing.
I have told my own daughter this many times. I recall the first time, when she was struggling with her self-worth, as a teenager. I sat her down on our sofa, and said the following:
“I need you to know that the reason I love you has nothing to do with what you accomplish, or even how you act in the world. I don’t love you “because of” or “when” anything, but rather simply because you exist. And it will always be that way. You’re more than enough, just by being.
My fourteen year-old responded as follows:
“Oh, wow.”
The expression on her face said everything I needed. She “got it”.
With Before the Fall, I reference the biblical parable of Eden, wherein Adam and Eve bite the apple of knowledge, and suddenly feel inadequate for the first time, after which God banishes them.
It is convenient for those seeking to control other people, like those in scarcity-minded populations, to make them believe they need to do something—pray, atone, devote lives to being productive, strive for ideals set by others, and submit to external authority—to be enough.
A life spent in fear and scarcity is one others can easily control. It is also a recipe for discontentment, in which the best we can hope for are moments of fleeting joy, happiness and delight.
Contentedness isn’t lauded because it flies in the face of what we still believe, two thousand four hundred years after Diogenes first warned us about these things, is our purpose in life: to pursue growth—of reputation, wealth, possessions and power. It’s not just a little bit ironic that there comes a point in life where some of the world’s most powerful use that very wealth to unplug; to step off the hamster wheel that finally delivered them to the same place they were when they were children:
Lost in play. Feeling free. And without a care in the world.
I continue to photograph children because I am part of the world that believes in its own inadequacy, and in the need to “be something” in order to count or contribute to its “success”. Children remind me that the key isn’t out there, but within; and that if we dare, we can learn to unlearn the things we were taught, and which separated us from our own deep contentment, before our fall.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: bill wegener on Unsplash
