Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old
Or a friend when you’re lonely or a love that’s grown cold
The wealthiest person is a pauper at times
Compared to the man with a satisfied mind
— from ‘A Satisfied Mind’ by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes, 1954.
About 25 years ago, my wife Clarissa and I began hosting intimate ‘house concerts’ in our living room, featuring musicians — some relatively well-known, some relatively unknown — for audiences of 30-50 people. We charged $10 at the door and donated all the money to the musician. We also allowed the musician to stay the night in our spare bedroom, and fixed them breakfast in the morning.
Typically, our house concert musicians were on tour and were headed for a gig in a nearby town — Durango, Cortez, Santa Fe, Denver — and Pagosa Springs was a convenient stop on their way.
Although I’m a musician myself, I can’t imagine life ‘on the road’ to be a pleasant existence. For a couple of months, maybe? But not as a permanent lifestyle.
One of the musicians we hosted was Bryan Bowers, a contemporary American singers who also happens to be a virtuoso autoharp player. He arrived with a half dozen autoharps, each tuned to a different key. And, as it turned out, each in need of tuning — a process that required us to be very quiet in the kitchen as we prepared the beverages and snacks for the concert.
The song that sticks in my memory from that concert: ‘A Satisfied Mind.’
Here’s a YouTube video of Bryan Bowers (playing autoharp) and Claudia Schmidt (playing the Appalachian dulcimer?) with a rendition of ‘A Satisfied Mind’.
According to Wikipedia, the song ‘A Satisfied Mind’ has been recorded over the past 70 years by at least four dozen musicians, including Ella Fitzgerald, Porter Wagoner, Johnny Cash, Robert Plant, Bob Dylan, Glen Campbell, Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples… to name just a few.
Clearly, the song contains a message that’s meaningful to musicians.
How many times have you heard someone say
If I had his money, I can do things my way?
But little they know that it’s so hard to find
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind
As some Daily Post readers know, I live in downtown Pagosa Springs in an older house — built in 1900 — with my daughter Ursala, her husband Chris, my two granddaughters Amelie and Simone, the family dog Frida, and the family cat Vincent.
I would guess that, as individuals living as a family, we are each generally satisfied with our daily lives. At any given moment. Generally speaking.
But we all have moments when we want something we don’t have.
To judge by behavior, our family cat Vincent seems to be the one who most often seeks satisfaction. He stands by the door, meowing to be let out. Then, fifteen minutes later, he’s standing outside the door, meowing to be let in.
This pattern can occur more than a dozen times a day.
I imagine many Daily Post readers, who own cats, observe similar behavior?
Of course, I myself will often go in and out the door more than a dozen times a day, without giving it a second thought, because I can open the door for myself. It’s more noticeable when Vincent does it, because he’s handicapped by his short stature and lack of opposable thumbs. So he needs someone to help him facilitate his desire, for whatever experiences he might be seeking outside, or whatever might be waiting for him inside. Exactly what those temporarily-satisfying experiences might be, I can’t always discern.
My sense of my hometown: the people I know, and meet, typically feel satisfied to have landed in a beautiful, relatively quiet mountain paradise.
Yes, I occasionally come across someone who can’t wait to escape, and is just waiting for the opportunity to leave — maybe, until they have enough money saved to settle somewhere else.
This seems to be the exception, however, not the rule.
But I can’t say that the folks who are happily settled here, and are looking forward to living here until they die, are necessarily ‘satisfied’.
An awful lot of people would like to see better road maintenance, for example. They like the idea of living a good distance from the center of town, surrounded by forest and wildlife, but dislike the miles of washboard roads and ugly potholes. Perhaps they have to haul their water? And have sketchy cell service?
It’s easy to be “something other than satisfied”. We can often feel like a cat waiting at the door for someone to come along and open it.
For some reason, I’ve made it my goal in life to write a daily editorial for the Daily Post, typically to complain about this or that questionable government decision, or lack of a decision.
Governments, like families and individuals, constantly seek to satisfy themselves. Maybe they want a new $126 million school facility on Vista Boulevard, or a new County administration building, or an additional EMS facility, or a 300-acre wilderness park south of Reservoir Hill, or a newly repaved airport runway, or a larger water treatment plant, or — God forbid — an 11,000 acre-foot reservoir on the Running Iron Ranch…
Once I was winning in fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for to get a start in life’s game
Suddenly it happened, I lost every dime
But I’m richer by far with a satisfied mind
How does one cultivate a satisfied mind?
Do we even want to have one?
Read Part Two… tomorrow…