Life nowadays is like a buffet:
We have an excess of food displayed in front of us, and we want all of it right now, regardless of which stage we’re at in our meal.
Seeing more than we need makes us want more than we need.
We find ourselves having to battle temptation constantly, and yet our supply of willpower is finite.
When we inevitably fail to battle with our own will,
We beat ourselves up for not resisting our desires.
In today’s always online world, we are presented all the possibilities of everything we could be, or could do, at once.
Thus we’re not able to just be happy with the plate of perfectly good food that we have in front of us.
Already, as we tuck into a tasty meal we can’t help glancing off to the rest of the options on the table.
We are jumping ahead to the desserts before we finish our starters.
The source of all pain in human condition:
Seeing a state we are able to achieve.
Comparing what we have to what we could have manufactures a false desire which feels very real.
We constantly feeling like we can accomplish more things than we have time for.
when we don’t achieve it, we feel the loss.
Health and wealth are both tied to identity so loss of any one usually leads to a loss of character!
Of course values and integrity are different depending on culture, friend group etc.
This is why it’s so important to build you own sense of self,
Not tie your identity to how much you make,
Or whatever culture deems valuable just now.
50 years ago in the UK culture determined that being a “good” woman was equatable to being a good mother/wife
Being a “father” meant providing.
100 years ago if you were a peasant, that was your lot, and there was no future where you’d become a noble or a wealthy merchant.
Now we have expanded our horizons and we have far more choice in what “integrity” means.
Now we almost have too many choices.
Social would have us believe you can do anything, do any job, live anywhere
This is painful as it’s no longer clear what a “meaningful” life is and we try to pursue 5 different lifestyles at once.
And fear missing out on the ones we don’t pursue.
A happy life comes from being aligned with your daily actions
An unhappy life comes from not being able to align with our values and actions.
The 2 root causes of unhappiness
The only 2 root causes of unhappiness and social erosion we see in our society:
- Not knowing where to invest our attention and mental energy
- Knowing where to invest our attention, but not having access or opportunity to.
1 Not knowing what is worth to invest our attention and mental energy
When culture shifts too fast we lag behind, draining our energy on activities that are no longer valuable, or valued in the current culture.
It takes time to rewire your brain.
All the skills and knowledge we’ve built up serve a previous generation
2 not being able to invest our attention and energy where we know it matters
In socialist societies people can wait in line for days for simple day to day tasks. Increasingly we see this in democracies and capitalist societies too.
Our government or culture isn’t providing the means or opportunity to invest our time on things that matter.
The system is rigged in such a way that our attention is hijacked serve others.
- We don’t have hobbies we have Netflix.
- We don’t have skills we have 9-5s
- We don’t read books we watch Tiktok
What is the cure?
I don’t have the answer. But there are a few preventative measures which help. To combat compare and despair:
- Limit our options
- Accept we CAN have it all, but we have to choose WHICH to have for now, which means saying no to other options.
- Put on blinders, ie remove temptations such as unlimited feeds that make us dissatisfied with the plate we have in front of us.
- Stop living in possible futures, and start living now. ie Seek to increase the amount of flow in your life
