The Sinkhole of Satisfaction

It's an illusion

It is impossible to be happy.

That may sound pessimistic, but it's not meant to be. I think it's actually a good thing. If you allow me to explain myself, I think you'll agree.¹

Tom Brady is considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, and even he wasn’t happy. He’s had an illustrious career: He played his first season of professional (American) football at age 22. The next year, he lead his team to victory at the Super Bowl, and was named the sport's Most Valuable Player. Over the course of the next 23 seasons (one of the longest careers of any quarterback), he won the Super Bowl another six times (the only player to have won in three separate decades), and was named MVP another four times. He was married to a supermodel, and his current estimated net worth is over $250 million. Pretty much the dream of every American boy.

Here's him in 2005, albeit awhile ago, but still far enough into his career to have achieved enough success for three lifetimes over.

See? I've proved my point. Case closed. Right?

But maybe you’re not so easily convinced. Maybe his career doesn't appeal to you, and you'd rather be an artist. Well, look at the life of Michael Jackson. Considered one of the greatest musicians and performers of all time, and yet he was plagued by dysmorphia and depression his whole life.

Ok, well maybe you'd rather be a business mogul, scientist, inventor. Look at the life of Howard Hughes, billionaire and record setter, who unfortunately succumbed to mental illness and lived like a recluse the last several years of his life.

The stories are endless. Happiness is impossible. Right?!

Sometimes, when I propose this in a conversation, my listeners are immediately up in arms, ready to argue, to debate me, to fight mercilessly and without any hint of compromise. It's as if some part of them knows deep down that it might possibly be true, but only if they accept the fact. Whereas if they continue to keep striving, fighting against the riptide, and refuse to acknowledge its existence, they may one day escape and stand on dry land, victorious, arms raised, smug smile, and say aloud, "I told you so!" as they revel in their newfound state of everlasting bliss.

But I think it’s a fantasy.

Have there been moments of happiness in our lives? Absolutely.

Have they lasted? Decidedly not.

The riptide and the waves

But I want to argue that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Like the riptide, we can only escape it by first recognizing that we are in it, and then deciding not to fight it, nor let it take us out to deeper waters, but rather to swim across it. To ignore it is only to waste our efforts.

And to use another nautical analogy, with the proper understanding of this ineffable feature of human nature, rather than be crushed by the waves of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, we can eventually learn to surf them.

If you've ever tried to surf (or snowski, or skateboard, or even, honestly, ride a bike), you know that the first several attempts are very frustrating. Infuriating even. You wonder how some idiot decided that this would be a good idea, and also how so many other idiots think that it's fun to do. We wobble and fall, faceplant or skin our knees or split open our palms or bruise our bums. But then, the moment when it finally clicks— it’s breathtaking.

I’ll never forget the moment I first stood up on a surfboard. I had been eating saltwater all day, crashing and crashing and crashing and crashing. It had been hours. No amount of couching from my guide could aid me. But then, finally— once I finally find my balance, it felt like flying. You know that that first millisecond when the airplane leaves the ground and the wings generate that miracle we call "lift"— I was no longer stumbling, but instead cruising upon the surface, gliding, soaring, flowing effortlessly. It's uncanny how it feels to our bipedal bodies that are accustomed to lumbering around and drudging across dry land to instead slip and slide across seas or snow or sidewalks.

This is what's at stake: pretend that happiness is achievable and maintainable without any disruption, you are caught in a riptide, fighting ceaselessly against a force that you cannot hope to overcome.

Or, accept that this it is impossible, and learn how to go around it, and catch a wave back closer to shore, flying across the waves like a professional surfer. You may not ever arrive on the land, at least not in this life. But you won't be treading water endlessly either, and you can take a break while you surf, at least until the wave runs out, and then you can catch another riptide back out to where the waves are.

Problem? What problem?

So where does this riptide come from?

"Twenty three hundred years ago Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal—health, beauty, money, or power—is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy. Much has changed since Aristotle’s time...And yet on this most important issue very little has changed in the intervening centuries. We do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did, and as for learning how to attain that blessed condition, one could argue that we have made no progress at all." —Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Thus begins the landmark book, Flow, published in 1975.²

Stop for a moment and think about all your plans for today, for this week, and this year. At root, what is the end goal of all of them? Isn't it true, that in some way, their purpose is to make you happy? Whether it be a selfish motive or an altruistic one, whether it's serving your customers, your family, your community, or those less fortunate, these pursuits ultimately result in making the world a better place, and making us feel good about our efforts in contributing in that capacity, and will also, hopefully, promote our own happiness by doing so, or at the very least, someone else's happiness. I wrote a few weeks ago³ about one caveat to this whole process, which is that I believe our relationships are tightly intertwined with our quest for happiness, and can be one way of avoiding the tendency towards pure selfishness. But nevertheless, we must acknowledge that happiness is perhaps still the fundamental emotion we are all seeking, in one form or another.

And as the author states, we have made astonishing progress in the last two millennia—in medicine, in economics, in manufacturing, democracy, the internet, infrastructure, electricity, philosophy, psychology, art, music, et cetera ad nauseum. And yet, we haven't solved the problem of happiness.

Or is it a problem at all?

Allow me to propose that, in the lingo of programmers, Unhappiness is not a bug, but a feature.

Or in the jargon of philosophers: Dissatisfaction is a good servant, but a bad master.

The path of progress and human development is certainly worth pursuing, but I don’t think it will ever address this part of our psyches. In some form or another, most of us are treading that path, both in our own personal lives, and the work we do that contributes to the world. But that road does not lead to happiness. Else we would have reached it since Aristotle's time. And I don’t think another 2.5 millennia will change that. Unless you are hoping for some Brave-New-World-esque type of delusion where we chemically sedate (or technologically simulate) ourselves into stupor.

“For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden

It’s always something

But now that we understand the riptide, let's talk about the wave.

The past few months, we've been discussing this series about Freedom vs. Limits.⁴ This essay is just one part of explaining how this whole phenomenon occurs, and why, and what to do about it. Today we are looking at how those limits apply to our dissatisfaction. We've been looking frequently at the writings of David Foster Wallace to understand this topic.

There's an absolutely gorgeous and striking quote from Infinite Jest, his most famous novel, that I think is critical to illustrating this issue. But first, some brief context about this quote:

- The setting: an elite tennis academy in Boston, MA. It's like a boarding school, where the children have been placed by their parents since they were in diapers, in order to groom them to one day compete in the world tour as professional players (if they are lucky).

- The speaker: head coach Gerhard Schtitt, a militant drill-sergeant type who grew up in post-Berlin wall Germany (thus some of the odd ways of putting things).

- The audience: a selection of some of the oldest teenage boys, who since their earliest memories have done one thing- live and breath the sport of Tennis.

- The situation: it's November in Boston, and the boys are playing tennis outside, and as you might imagine it's obviously very cold, and so they raise some complaints. Thus Schtitt congregates the boys and begins a stiff lecture, pacing back and forth:

“Because, privileged gentlemen and boys I am saying, is always something that is too. Cold. Hot. Wet and dry. Very bright sun and you see the purple dots. Very bright hot and you have no salt. Outside is wind, the insects which like the sweat. Inside is smell of heaters, echo, being jammed in together, tarp is overdose to baseline, not enough of room, bells inside clubs which ring the hour loudly to distract, clunk of machines vomiting sweet cola for coins. Inside roof too low for the lob. Bad lighting, so. Or outside: the bad surface. Oh no look no: crabgrass in cracks along baseline. Who could give the total, with crabgrass. Look here is low net high net. Opponent’s relatives heckle, opponent cheats, linesman in semifinal is impaired or cheats. You hurt. You have the injury. Bad knee and back. Hurt groin area from not stretching as asked. Aches of elbow. Eyelash in eye. The throat is sore. A too pretty girl in audience, watching. Who could play like this? Big crowd overwhelming or too small to inspire. Always something.”

What Schtitt is getting at here is the ubiquitous and universal human mindset of Normalization. No matter how great things are for a little while, they eventually become normal. We come to expect them. But it also works the other way, no matter how awful things are for a little while, they eventually become normal too.

This is both a blessing and a curse.

It's a blessing because if for whatever reason, a tragedy befalls you—say you lose one of your legs, or you become deaf, or blind, or you're now allergic to peanuts when peanut butter was your favorite food, or you break up with your partner or lose a loved one—at first you might worry that it will totally ruin your life. But give it a few months, and it becomes your new baseline. This is not to say that you won't miss that previous life you had, But the sharp and biting misery you feel upon the fresh wound will eventually settle into a dull aching throb. And there will be moments where you totally forget about the pain too.

For example. About seven years ago, I decided to jump off a cliff in the sea that was about 30 meters tall, or nine stories. My friends told me it could be done, and that it had been done before. But when I jumped, I made a slight miscalculation and hit the water at a bad angle. In that instant of colliding with the water, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to signal this to my friends, but they thought I was joking. Until I started sinking. And so they gathered me out of the water, swam me to shore, and got me to an emergency center.

I ended up surviving, as you can tell.

But ever since that day, I’ve had a chronic pain in my upper back where one of my thoracic vertebrae was fractured. It’s not extreme, but about a 3-4 out of 10 in terms of pain. And I spend about 30-60 minutes every day doing physical therapy for it. Yeah it’s frustrating, but I’ve made a lot of progress. I still have the pain, but it’s better now, and often I forget about it, until I’ve been sitting for too long.

Back pain is a part of me now. It has been for years, and probably will be for the rest of my life. It’s normal. It’s ok. I’m honestly not upset about it. It bothers me, sure, but no more than it would bother you to have to tie your shoes in the morning, or brush your teeth in the evening. Just something we gotta do.

There’s a similar feature of our psyches as it relates to our memory. Usually we express our frustation that we forget so many things, and blame ourselves for our stupidity, or thoughtlessness. We have both short-term memory loss (where did I put my phone?) and long-term memory loss (what did I do for my birthday last year?) We may not be able to remember every moment of our childhood, or other days of relative ease, when would like to. Or even of a recent vacation, or simply a really wonderful day. We can recollect snapshots, here and there. How we felt. What the scenery looked like (a blurry photograph at best). A specific sound may echo in our mind. But these are mere trailers taken from the full movie. What a travesty that we cannot remember in full all the beautiful moments of our lives!

But here's the silver lining of that: we also cannot remember in full the terrible moments of our lives. Again, we may recall snippets of awful days. Perhaps we still have nightmares about some of the most embarrassing events we ever lived through. It's said that our bodies retain memories of certain uncomfortable situations— especially traumatic events. Nevertheless, we can also forget much of the horror of the lowest periods of our lives.

This is the same phenomenon of Normalization: both good and bad circumstances eventually become just the status quo. But how do we respond to this new baseline? Do we look at the glass half-full, and celebrate how far we've come, how much worse things could be? Or do we look at the glass half-empty, and complain how much better things could be, ought to be, have to be, before we can finally be "ok"?

Though this predisposition to optimism or pessimism varies from person to person, and to a large extent, depends on what we have lived through or witnessed, and what is expected of our peer group, and a bunch of other factors, I can tell you right now that we still most of our time in the mode of wishing how things could be better. It’s always something, isn’t it?

And this is what coach Schtitt is addressing, in his broken English accent, coming at the issue from his background as a German youth, growing up in the difficult world that was post-Berlin wall East Germany. He's been through some shit, to say the least, and here he is coaching these young men who have been put into a pretty cushy institution by their parents to do one thing—play a sport. Sure, their lives are relatively difficult. There’s much more pressure put on them, they have much more rigorous and demanding schedules, than the average teenager. But no matter what, there is always another excuse. The conditions are not quite right for them to really give it their all. The problem is "out there." And the grass is always greener on the other side.

No matter how good (or bad) things are, we adjust, we normalize, we acclimate. And then the inevitable consequence—WANT. We want something else. We can never be comfortable forever.

Insatiable

Wallace writes about this exact topic in more direct fashion in his famous essay about his experience on a cruise ship⁵. The piece is a joy to read, not only for the acrid wit and hilarious moments that he narrates, but also for the serious existential monologue, in which he grapples with his inability to be happy. He explains how the cruise ship is designed to be a vacation where all of our needs are taken care of, without us even needing to say so, like a baby. And how at first he revels in all the luxury and endless little touches of comfort and pleasure and sensation. But after a few days, other little things start to wear on him about his experience on the ship (which he calls the Nadir). Slight gripes with the way the ice sculptures are carved. The way the bread sits on the plate and soaks into the juice from the pickle. The way the vegetables are always slightly overcooked.

And then he sees another cruise ship docked at the same port, managed by another company, and begins to wonder if perhaps things might be better there. If they, maybe, finally got everything right. And all he would need to do is change ships and THEN everything will be perfect.

“I am suffering here from a delusion, and I know it’s a delusion, this envy of another ship, and still it’s painful. It’s also representative of a psychological syndrome that I notice has gotten steadily worse as the Cruise wears on, a mental list of dissatisfactions and grievances that started picayune but has quickly become nearly despair-grade. I know that the syndrome’s cause is not simply the contempt bred of a week’s familiarity with the poor old Nadir, and that the source of all the dissatisfactions isn’t the Nadir at all but rather plain old humanly conscious me, or, more precisely, that ur-American part of me that craves and responds to pampering and passive pleasure: the Dissatisfied Infant part of me, the part that always and indiscriminately WANTS…

But the Infantile part of me is insatiable—in fact its whole essence or dasein or whatever lies in its a priori insatiability. In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the Insatiable Infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction. And sure enough, on the Nadir itself, after a few days of delight and then adjustment, the Pamper-swaddled part of me that WANTS is now back, and with a vengeance.” —David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

It's quite difficult to come to terms with this, especially in a place that was advertised as being perfect, the place where all of our needs and wants are supposed to be taken care of, before we even know they exist. The experience might be like arriving at Heaven at the end of our lives, and then realizing that it's actually not so great. That it's just a slightly better version of earth. That there are still trifling annoyances and minor difficulties that taint the whole experience. What a nightmare that would be!

But Wallace is also onto something here. He's realizing that this constant dissatisfaction is not due to his environment, it's not a problem that's "out there," but rather "in here." It's a problem with Wallace himself. And with all of us. It's an inherent feature of our human nature. This is scary. Is it truly impossible to be happy?!

Until we realize the silver lining—that part of us that is always normalizing and then getting impatient and discontented, that is its purpose. Its essence, its raison d’etre. We are designed this way. This is an adaptive mechanism. This is a good thing.

But how can that be? We already mentioned the benefits of normalization when it comes to moving past tragedy, but is it really worth it? Is it necessary that we always be dissatisfied? It seems a steep cost.

If you rest, you rust

But there's another perspective that explains this phenomenon, and why it’s so useful:

“We are always and simultaneously at point “a” (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point “b” (which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values). We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right, and improved, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied, temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn’t even be able to see, because to see we must focus, and to focus we must pick one thing above all else on which to focus.

But we can see. We can even see things that aren’t there. We can envision new ways that things could be better. We can construct new, hypothetical worlds, where problems we weren’t even aware of can now show themselves and be addressed. The advantages of this are obvious: we can change the world so that the intolerable state of the present can be rectified in the future. The disadvantage to all this foresight and creativity is chronic unease and discomfort. Because we always contrast what is with what could be, we have to aim at what could be. But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.” —Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

Peterson explains that the benefits of this condition are clear—we always have the power to change the world for the better, to imagine new ways of doing things, new worlds entirely, even new problems which have yet to even consider. But the downsides are more subtle and insidious—we are always uncomfortable, dissatisfied, uneasy, frustrated, disappointed. You may not feel these emotions in a powerful way every time, they may not drag you down on a daily basis, they may not stop you in your tracks (though some depressed people certainly feel this), but they are nevertheless everpresent, cropping up in little nuances, in quiet moments, influencing our mindset and our behavior over the course of months and years.

But what does he mean when he says, “if we did not see things this way, we would not act at all”?

The Sinkhole of Satisfaction

As awful as it is that we normalize all the time, which creates incessant dissatisfaction, the alternative is much worse. Consider the opposite—imagine that it were possible that we could reach a state of complete and everlasting bliss (here on earth). In this state, we would have no desire to eat or drink or relieve ourselves or exercise or sleep or contribute to the world around us. We would not want to change at all. Go anywhere, do anything. Why should we? We are happy here.

We would literally rot within our seats.

This, ironically is the plot engine of Infinite Jest, a movie with the same name, Infinite Jest (which means "unlimited fun"). The movie is so seductively entertaining that those who watch it feel compelled to continue watching, no matter what. Nothing else compares. Everything loses its significance. They lose all will to live. They become zombies.

This endless satisfaction is actually a sinkhole.

So that’s what is waiting on the other side of the riptide, on the “solid” land. It’s an illusion. You want unending happiness in this life? It seems more like a dead end to me. I’d rather keep surfing. Keeping going places. I will crash a few times. It will be uncomfortable. But it’s better than being so comfortable that I don’t ever want to do anything else ever again.

Ok so the alternative is worse, but that doesn’t change the problem at hand—we still know that this Normalization can be the cause of an unceasing agony in our lives. If we are always dissatisfied, always chasing the next high, we are going to be miserable forever. This is partly what's at stake here.

So how do we deal with this? Is there any way to harness the benefits of dissatisfaction without succumbing to the worst consequences?

Schtitt's speech is the key to this entire issue. This topic has vital importance for the players—vital in the truest sense of the word, as their lives completely depend on this sport. As we discussed a few weeks ago⁶, tennis professionals have completely sacrificed their lives to the game (this same is true of any professional who dedicates their life). This is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. Everything rides upon their performance

If they fail to grasp the full significance of his speech, they may end up totally destroyed by the end of their careers. Or before they even begin in earnest.

But if the topic of this essay resonates with you, then you may also realize that his speech also has vital importance for us too. For we want to make our lives better, and improve the world, and we’re willing to go through some difficulty to make that happen, but we also want to be happy and contented, and not chasing after the wind all our lives.

So Schtitt’s speech is the key, but we haven’t yet addressed the door that it unlocks. To fully understand the implications of this issue, we need more context. As mentioned, we’ve been discussing a series on Freedom vs. Limits, and the essays both before and after this one will help us address the issue presented today (again the links are in the footnotes).

For now, suffice it to say that “knowing is half the battle.” Simply recognizing these facts of human life—that we normalize, that we become dissatisfied, that we have to have this in order to keep moving—will help us to deal with them. Or at least, we wont’ be surprised when it happens.

1. I apologize upfront for any typos or grammatical errors. I have had a hell of a time trying to get substack to work today, but I’ve been publishing every Wednesday for months now, and I’m not stopping now.

2. Flow, which I'm sure you've heard the term and are familiar with it now. If you're not, do yourself a favor and go get a copy immediately; it's easily one of the top 10 most important books I've ever read, perhaps even top 3.

3. The essay about relationships here.

4. The links to the series on Freedom vs. Limits

1. The Defect of Freedom

2. Drowning in Decisions

3. A Complete Human

4. Mental Instapot

5. I wrote about this essay in more detail here.

6. For the essay about pros, see the link to “A Complete Human” above.