A Monk's Vow of Stability

"Merton explains: “By making a vow of stability the monk renounces the vain hope of wandering off to find a ‘perfect monastery.’ This implies a deep act of faith: the recognition that it does not much matter where we are or whom we live with…Stability becomes difficult for a man whose monastic ideal contains some note, some element of the extraordinary. All monastaries are more or less ordinary…Its ordinariness is one of its greatest blessings.”

When I first read this, it reminded me of – what else, marriage. Marriage is a vow of stability, made with the conviction that by committing yourself to one person, you’re better able to achieve happiness than by searching continually for the “perfect” person, and that the ordinariness that descends on it after the early exhilaration and novelty wear off is, in fact, one of its most prized aspects."

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/01/how-a-monks-vow-of-stability-applies-in-ordinary-life.html