Misery loves company...This was one of my Grandma Blackhair's favorite sayings. I heard it so much growing up that I never really stopped to consider what it meant, or if it was true. Misery, after all, can mean many things: sorrow, despair, discomfort, even terror. Having experienced grief, I would never want company in that black hole of utter, hopeless loss. I'd spare anyone that pain if I could. Wouldn't you? How about despair or terror? No sane, decent person would wish for others to lose their job, or be faced with a terminal illness. Normal folks don't hope divorce or miscarriage or even tax audits befall their neighbors. What brand of misery is it that so craves companionship?

It's the misery of discontentment. A whole lot of attention gets paid in America to the concept of happiness. Our Constitution guarantees its pursuit, if not its capture. We expect to be happy. We're willing to trample all over the people and things around us to get a little closer to happy. We swallow pills and elixers, we buy gadgets and contraptions, we move from place to place, job to job, lover to lover all the while thinking that Happiness, capital H, is right there at the next turn. The more we churn up our lives trying to make ourselves happy, the more lost and wretched we feel. Meanwhile, most of us are drowning in comfort and contentment. It's akin to dying of thirst while adrift at sea. How can there be water everywhere and nary a drop to drink?

The problem, I think, lies not in our lives, but in our expectations. Think back to when you were a kid. Unless you were in the wealthiest part of town, you didn't live in a big, fancy McMansion. Your parents didn't drive brand-new cars every other year. Vacations were camping trips or visits to the beach. A big Christmas meant you got a new bike. Birthday parties were held in the backyard, not at fancy spas or deafeningly loud, wildly overstimulating arcade warehouses. We might have dreamed of being rich someday, but we sure didn't expect to live like the rich in the meantime.

Fast forward to 2001. We're led to believe that everyone has a cathedral ceiling, four televisions, mulitple stereos, DVD players, new cars, snowboards, jetskis, laptops, cell phones, Palm Pilots, swimming pools, cruise vacations, trips to Disney, Visa, Discover, American Express, expresso machines, and a favorite latte at Starbucks. We all live like we're rich, and we feel we deserve it. So what if the plastic is maxed out? We're entitled to a little happiness, right? The bills will get paid...maybe. (My favorite irony of our bloated consumer age is the recent explosion of products and publications promoting the simple life. Listen, if you need to drop five bucks on a magazine named Simple to figure out that it's relaxing to sip a cold glass of iced tea while rocking on a front porch, then you've gone beyond help.) It's a nasty cycle: spending, followed by dissatisfaction, envy and eventually, bitterness. Before long you can't figure out what a blessing is, much less count one.

People who suffer incredible misfortune or adversity and somehow still manage to remain joyous and alive aren't keeping any mysterious secret from the rest of us. They just live in the world as it is. They're not waiting for a vague "someday" when all the cash and prizes will be theirs, all wrongs righted, all hardships eased. There's a powerful lot of peace and contentment available every day for the taking. Do you take it? Do you see it? It's right there in that cherry tree just starting to blossom, the one in the far corner of the yard, the one you haven't really looked at since last summer. It's in your spouse, your kids, your dog, resting his head on your foot in total trust. It's in hearing your favorite song at exactly the moment you wish the radio station would play it. It's in having nothing to do on a cold night but lay on the couch and read "The Polar Express" aloud to child. It's in about a million things, most of them free. If they're invisible, it's only because we've forgotten how to look.

Last weekend, I mulled over the misery-loves-company idea while having another go at the perfect meatball. My mother, that old schemer in Wyoming, finally coughed up a recipe. Springsteen was blasting on the stereo. (Meatballs can only be made to Springsteen, Sinatra, or Pavarotti. You can't make Italian food with Moby or Dave Matthews. It just won't work.) Outside was pouring rain, inside was unfolded laundry, wet dogs, and a sinkful of dirty dishes. Up to my elbows in raw meat, staring off into space, I found myself marveling that one could actually be barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen, and perfectly content. Standing there, I remembered the day I woke up, the day I learned what it means to live in the moment. It was June, 1995, a perfectly beautiful summer morning. I was standing at the edge of an open grave, staring at the casket that they said held my Grandma Blackhair. I tried to listen to the priest, but it was hard, because it felt as though a shotgun had blasted a giant hole in my chest. No one else seemed to see it. I couldn't understand that. How can a person whose been blown to bits appear just fine? Taking very careful breaths, so as to not completely disintegrate, I looked up at the sky. It was the deepest, purest, most spectacular blue, almost close enough to dip a finger in and swirl. I heard a voice - I don't know whose - say, "You are right here." I was - and I am.

An epiphany is always personal. What forever changes my life might not even make a ripple in yours. We all muddle through on our own, no matter how many toys or people we try to fill the silence with. Contentment isn't something we buy; it's something we make. Maybe it starts with gratitude. When I find myself fretting over not having a Lexus, a beach house, a Rolex, or these days, a waist, I think of a poem by Franz Wright called "Cloudless Snowfall" that ends with as simple a prayer of thanksgiving as you'll find anywhere: Thank You for keeping Your face hidden, I can hardly bear the beauty of this world.