I wish I could be as satisfied as him

"I wish I could be as satisfied as him",
he said, in the same calm, measured slow manner in which he had been spooling out his words for the last half hour. He was an old man, past fifty. The few remaining grey, oiled strands of his hair lay down lazily across his head like the arms of a palm tree. Just as you can see the moon through its leaves you could see his bald, oiled pate shining through this last, long hair.

He had contentment about him - a sense of never being in a hurry. He spoke slowly, as if measuring out the words that left him. A small chest and a hanging paunch. If RK Laxman's common man had a paunch, this would be him.
If the ancient, wise monkey of Lion King had a few hair, this would be him.

Languorously, with hazaar ancient anecodtes, he took us through the problems of working with contract manufacturers - sometimes with touching sympathy and sometimes with prickly cynicism. A twinkling, impish humor kept background score for his soft recital. It was then, as a part of that tapestry of many colourful stories, he told us about this immensely laid back, content contract manufacturer who refused to expand his plant to take on more work.
"Saab, jitna milta hai usme khush hain", was his mild rebuke to compelling economic logic. It was then that our gentle old Aesop remarked,

"I wish I could be as satisfied as him."

I wish I could have told him then....that,

Being happily satisfied is not a choice that we make.
It is a choice we choose not to make.

This un-choice is what makes successful men. And unhappy men.

This un-choice is the stuff from which dreams spring.
And inhuman, brutal greed.

This un-choice makes conquerors and barbarians.

It is a strange force this. It makes us. It destroys us. But it never completes us.
No ambitious man has ever died "satisfied".