Tuesday night, I had one of the most compelling conversations with a friend about the beauty of contentment.

For almost two hours, we sat in my living room and I listened as Sarah shared some heartfelt insight she has learned over the past month of being at peace with where she is in life.

With the economy down the drain and the job market dulled, it seems we all could benefit from learning a little bit more contentment.

I’ll be honest; contentment is a hard lesson for me to learn.

By nature, I’m compulsive, restless. All too often, I thrive on planning my life’s next step, instead of enjoying the present moment for what it is.

Even more often, that preoccupation with making new plans or not appreciating what I have leads me to trouble.

Which, incidentally, explains why Sarah was over at my house Tuesday night talking about contentment to begin with. She was there adding the second box of dye to my hair to correct a decision based in discontentment made 72 hours prior.

Shopping in a Wal-Mart Friday night with another one of my best friends, I walked through the hair care aisle and suddenly decided that blonde is the perfect color for hair for summer.

Who cares that my golden brown hair is the perfect fit for my all-too pale skin? Or that I’ve always loved how my hair naturally lightens in the summer and darkens in the winter?

Rational thought was out the window.

All I could think about was how much I loved the idea of being blonde for the summer and therefore hated my dull, regular, run-of-the-mill hair color now.

With dye boxes in hand, we made it back to my house and bleached the life out of my poor, unsuspecting scalp.

The results, as you can imagine, did not live up to the hype. What was meant as blonde turned out just, well, plain yellow.

I felt like a giant neon sign for poor decision-making.

And throughout the duration of my three days as a blonde, I just kept yearning for my old head of hair — the simple, run-of-the-mill, perfectly me hair.

As Sarah finished dumping the last bottle of brown goo on my head, it became blatantly obvious that my now severely damaged locks were the perfect object lesson for the importance of contentment.

If ever you feel that restlessness stirring inside you, Suffolk, make sure to take stock of and be thankful for what you have. Otherwise you, too, could become that girl with the yellow hair … so to speak.