You are the rare writer making this distinction between feeling happy and content. Contentment, like being in love, is a state of being.

Happy is an emotion that comes and goes, like sadness (depression is real — (Lady) that is a different context)(Janice). Unlike being in love, tending towards all or nothing, contentment has different baseline levels to which one returns after moments of feeling happy or sad. Seek contentment, which is not settling, but a hopefully high-altitude baseline of tranquility, coming from within and connection to without. It doesn’t stem from the acquisition of attachments but awareness of connection to the world/universe as a living, breathing, and heart-beating organism and from alignment of mind and soul and discerning one’s purpose (Keri)— from discovering who I am at my core.(Holly) Here is a great treatment of the subject that I read 2 months ago in The Startup’s Curious.