I once got into a philosophical discussion about this with a Basque sheepherder in Nevada. He was in his 60's, and spent most of the year outdoors, living in the mountains with large bands of sheep, coming into town maybe once a month to get some supplies. From about April to late September, he'd be out on the range, with no other humans around, living in a little trailer that they hauled around here and there. Sometimes, in the middle of the summer, he'd be out sleeping under the stars for weeks at a time when the sheep were up in the higher country where he couldn't haul the trailer. He didn't have many possessions. He sent most of his pay off to various members of his family. He didn't own a vehicle. He didn't have a bank account. Almost everything he owned was there with him when I met him - a couple of tin plates, some utensils, a couple of workmanlike knives, a beat-up .223 bolt action rifle, the clothes on his back, some clothes in his pay, a very nice set of boots on his feet. No watch, no cellphone, no radio, nothing electronic. No need for batteries.

Anyway, I ran into him early one hunting season. His Great Pyr dogs alerted him to my presence and after he called them off, we met up. Nice guy. Liked to talk to people if they passed by, it turned out. I'd have to say he was one of the happiest and most pleasant people I've ever met. He's passed on now, one of the last of the old-school Basque herders and a real connection to the past, gone.


His perspective on being content was that there were two ways to accomplish being content:

1. You could work hard, increasing how much you earned, until you earned enough to be content at your chosen level of consumption.

2. You could reduce your level of consumption until making very little money would suffice to keep you content.

He chose the latter method, I chose the first method. After talking for a couple of hours, we agreed that it was more difficult to achieve contentment by his chosen method - but he was much closer to achieving happiness than I was...