Resources Developed
■ Appreciating the simple things
■ Feeling okay about yourself
■ Enjoying your own company
■ Enjoying the company of others
■ Accepting that you are not perfect
■ Learning to relax
■ Creating peaceful thoughts
■ Accepting that contentment may be different for different people
■ Appreciating your environment
■ Using what you learn from othersOutcomes Offered
■ ContentmentContentment was a word that Fred Mouse may have heard, but he hadn’t really thought about it
before. It sounded like a big adult word. However, when he did hear it, Fred wondered what it meant.
He first began to think about it while eating his toasted cheese sandwich for breakfast in his hole
in the wall in the corner of the house. Maybe contentment, he thought, is that feeling in the morning when
your tummy is rumbling for food and you give it a hot toasted sandwich with runny cheese in the middle. That
would be contentment for me if I were a tummy, thought Fred. But did it mean more? He was curious to
explore what else it might be, so after breakfast he set out on a journey to find what more he could
learn about contentment.
The first friend he met was Philip Bear.Is Philip contented?Fred wondered. He seems happy to sit
wherever he happens to be and watch the world go by with a relaxed, teddy-bear smile on his face. He is also
happy if someone wants to pick him up, play with him, or give him a teddy-bear hug. Maybe, thought Fred
Mouse, contentment is just feeling okay whether you’re by yourself or enjoying time with others.
Philip had been loved, hugged, and cuddled so much that spots of his hair had begun to wear
off, but, interestingly, it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference that he wasn’t quite perfect. Maybe,
thought Fred Mouse, contentment is about feeling okay whether you’re perfect or not. But were there more
ways of being contented?
Instead of turning around and thinking he had all the answers, Fred continued on his journey
like an explorer wanting to discover the mysteries of the jungle. Soon he heard a soft purring from
the next room. As you might imagine, Fred Mouse was pretty careful when he heard the sound of
purring, so he peered around the corner warily. Curled up on the rug by a warm winter’s fire was
Tabby, the cat. She hardly moved except for the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her stomach and chest
with each relaxed breath that she took. Her muscles looked limp. Her mouth held a gentle smile.
Maybe that’s contentment, thought Fred, to take time to curl up, let your breathing grow slow and easy, feel the
comfort of you muscles and enjoy your own peaceful thoughts.
He began to wonder whether Tabby was thinking contented thoughts. Was she dreaming about
chasing a mouse? Was she dreaming about chasing him? It might be a contenting thought for Tabby, Fred
said quietly to himself, but it might not be very contenting for me to be chased by a cat. With that he had an-
other thought: Maybe what contentment is for one person isn’t the same as what it is for another.
128 Healing Stories, Teaching Stories