Contentment and Gratitude

I've been thinking a lot about contentment these days. What is contentment? What can one do to achieve contentment? Achieving contentment is one of the daily challenges Allah has presented us with. Is it just a problem specific to women, or both genders? In talking with all my girl friends, cousins, female relatives, I often think discontentment is a woman's curse. We're just never satisfied. Something good happens in our life and we're content for a short time, and then its time to improve it, to perfect it, to want more.

Allah has told us, ask me, and I will give it to you. Can this be abused? Let's say, for example, a couple wants to have their first child. So they pray, Oh Allah, if it is good for us, let us get pregnant. Then, when they get pregnant, their prayer is for a healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy. Then when its delivery time, their prayer is for a healthy baby. Then when the baby is born, their prayer is for a happy healthy child who lives a long successful righteous life. Then, when that baby is a few years old, their prayer is for a second child. And the cycle begins all over again. Can you ask for too much? Is this continuous cycle of asking being ungrateful for all the blessings you have already been given? Sometimes, I find myself praying to Allah, with my long list of duas, and I feel ashamed that I keep asking and that I can never ever ever be grateful enough for all the blessings I already have. I shouldn't feel ashamed, because He is the only one I can ask and He has promised to take care of us, but, at the same time, I feel like continuously asking for more and more and more is a form of ingratitude. Is this a form of ingratitude? Discontentment with the status quo? Am I reading into it wrong?

And then every so often, as a reminder, you meet someone in a worse situation than you, someone who has next to nothing, who is sick all the time, has no family, and experiences difficulty every day of their life, but that one person is more content than anyone else you know. More grateful for every day than you could ever be. And yet, we are made to forget these reminders as quickly as they come, so that we go back to our ungrateful selves.

And then there's the whole contentment with the self thing. My mother is a perfectionist. And perfection is never achieved in her eyes. So no matter what it was, it was always, you can do better next time, it's important to keep improving one self, etc. So if you do want to improve yourself, does that indicate that you are not content with yourself? And if you don't want to improve yourself, then you are content with yourself, but is that a good place to be Islamically? Islamically, aren't you supposed to be in a continuous self-improving process?

Just some things that have been on my mind for the past few days...comments would be appreciated.