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My wife blinked unhappily. She was unhappy for the same reason I was happy. “Turn on the TV”, she said, slightly irritated by the silence. “Don’t you want to have dinner without watching something?” I replied, hopeful that she’d agree but also quite sure that she’d disagree. “No, I’m tired. I want to watch something.” As I stood up to grab the remote, I briefly wrestled with the topic. Her idea of happiness while having dinner is to surrender to what’s readily available. Not that I blame her, it’s a common phenomenon. It just reminded me about the modern problem we all gracefully disregard.
We generally assume that if we have enough to eat and drink. Enough money to spend. A place to live and a sense of security. A partner and the opportunity to explore the world, then life won’t be particularly problematic. In reality, it often happens that a deeper struggle begins precisely after our basic needs are met.
Certainly, if any of the above is missing, then a person will indeed have difficult times. But what is typically not considered is what happens when all of our fundamentals are satisfied, and we don’t have anything worth fighting for.
The paradox of modern life is that, despite having everything we need, we remain dissatisfied.
I would never have stated something like this a couple of years ago.
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Since you’ve come this far, it seems that you are passionate about pursuing depth over distraction. I am too! And while what I’m about to say next probably won’t quite excite you, I have to say it…
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Footnotes:
- The Epic Scroll is just a barbaric way of labeling the now sadly normal behavior pattern where we sit and endlessly scroll on the phone without a clear direction. Just a desire to keep our minds busy.
- Green, T. & Griffith, J. & Aruguete, Mara & Edman, Jeanne & McCutcheon, Lynn. (2014). Materialism and the tendency to worship celebrities. North American Journal of Psychology. 16. 33-42. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287180397_Materialism_and_the_tendency_to_worship_celebrities
- Smith, Z.T. Sporting the sacred: Redescribing the study of religion in the Sociology of Sport’, Sociology of Sport Journal, pp. 1–11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2024-0237
- Prooijen, J.-W. van ‘Psychological benefits of believing conspiracy theories’, Current Opinion in Psychology, 47, p. 101352. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101352
- Black, I. & Veloutsou, C. ‘Working consumers: Co-creation of brand identity, consumer identity and brand community identity’, Journal of Business Research, 70, pp. 416–429. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.07.012
- Grant, J.E., et al. ‘Minimalism as a sustainable lifestyle: Its behavioral representations and contributions to emotional well-being’, Sustainable Production and Consumption, 27, pp. 802–813. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2021.02.001
