John Gunter

Thoughts on Life and Living

An open letter to the World…thoughts on finding contentment

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Josh Irby is a tremendous writer, musician, basketball player, and basic all around renaissance man.  He has also been a good friend of mine for more than 15 years.  Josh is hosting an Open Letter Challenge  contest on his excellent website.  He asked me to participate, so here is my attempt.  The following letter is my response to An Open Letter to You from the Rest of the World.”  Would love your thoughts at the end!Open letter to the rest of the world

Dear World,

Let’s learn to be content in all things!  The older I get, the more I see quality of life wrapped up in this little concept of contentment.  Allow me to explain.

As I have shared several times in my blog, contentment is somewhat of a theme in my life.  Rather, I should I say a pursuit of contentment.

I currently live in an Asian culture where the dominant world-view is atheism.  It is taught from birth with religious zealousness.  At its ideological core, this philosophical system teaches that this life is it.  You live and then nothing. [Read more…]

“this is it”. . . 3 pictures of contentment from my life

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This is the third post in a series on contentment I am doing.  If you would like to see the first two, please read Glory in the Grind . . . and Contentment. . . my on-going struggle.Jeremy Noonan, Julian Krevere, John Gunter, Phil Autry, and Troy Coons during a accountability weekend.

Jeremy Noonan, Julian Krevere, John Gunter, Phil Autry, and Troy Coons this summer (we are as close as ever). . .

A little while ago, a good friend of mine asked me, “when have you ever felt ‘this is it’”?  This was just another way of asking, when in life have you been completely content.  The more I thought about this question, three images or pictures kept coming to mind.  All three pictures are representative of larger themes of contentment in my life.

The first picture. . . an image of me playing centerfield in summer baseball comes to mind.  I remember so clearly standing out in the worn out patch of grass in centerfield, breathing in the air, enjoying the camaraderie of my teammates, no school to worry about, just the joy of baseball and friends.  There was zero pressure of failure, as summer ball was largely just for fun and practice.  There were almost no fans.  I don’t even remember my parents being there, which was highly unusual.  Just teammates, coaches, the sun, competition (hard fought, yet winning and losing was not utmost in our minds), and joy.

I wasn’t worried about the future.  I wasn’t weighed down past mistakes.  I just played, laughed, enjoyed, worked, sweat, bled, and loved every minute of it.  When I would leave the field, things would get more confusing.  Teammates sometimes became conduits of sin.  Coaches became avenues of stress.  Even talents became expectations, which would funnel into the fears of unrealized dreams and failure.  However, [Read more…]

Contentment. . . my on-going struggle

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After having yet another day that challenged my personal contentment in many ways (click here to read that post), I have been thinking about the subject of contentment more and more. Therefore, this post and maybe one or two more are going to be on this area of CONTENTMENT.

John Gunter looking stupid
This is me looking like I care too much about this rented car during my birthday car race adventure. . .

Allow me to start this out with a question regarding the area of contentment.

Are you content in life?

True confession . . . contentment, true contentment, has been something with which I have struggled throughout my life.  No matter what I have had, I have often wanted more. In little league baseball, it wasn’t enough to be an “all-star”, I was frustrated that I wasn’t the best in the entire league.  In school and work, I have often pushed myself well beyond reason, well beyond bosses’ and professors’ expectations. Even in accomplishment, I often think more about what I did wrong instead of what was done well. Why is this?

Through it all, though, I know that I am not alone.  I have found that one of the maladies common to almost all man is the seemingly impossible pursuit of true and lasting contentment.  Simply stated, we want what we don’t have.  It has always been this way in most of our lives, it just looks differently at different stages in life.

We want more friends, better toys, and a later bed-time in elementary school. We shift to the desire of greater popularity, athletic prowess, better grades, and hopefully a girlfriend/boyfriend in high school. College adjusts our longings to resume building and a spouse.

We get our first job

[Read more…]

Glory in the Grind – contentment in the midst of “one of those days”

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John Gunter on his primary form of transportation
Left: me in happier times. . . Right: today at the shop

Today has been one of THOSE days.  You know the kind.  We all have them.  Nothing cataclysmically bad happened, but everything was just kind of off.

I woke up sick.  Nothing like a tumor or anything, just your garden variety flu like symptoms.  Not bad enough for me to find a doctor, but bad enough to make life really uncomfortable.  This seems to happen a lot to us foreigners living over here in Asia.  We will get a cough and it just won’t go away.  Months on end, we cough.  One day we notice it is gone, but we don’t really know why.  It seems like that is what is happening to my body right now.

I woke up to a broken clothes dryer.  It’s been broken for over a week, but today was the day the repairman was to come.  At least they said he would either be here yesterday or today, so I was hoping today would be the day he would actually show up (tomorrow begins a holiday and then all bets are off).

Thankfully he did get here today.  He arrived at noon, after telling me he would be here in the morning.  He fixed it and left, but there went a large chunk of this day, including a canceled lunch appointment.

I went out and got on my motorbike only [Read more…]

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