The Finish Line Will Move
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was the founder and King of Corinth. He played an important role in making the city prosperous, but due to his cunning and deceitful nature, the gods, Zeus in particular, were angry at him. He condemned Sisyphus to push a boulder up a hill for eternity. Sisyphus would almost reach the top of the hill only to watch the boulder slide down the hill, and he had to do it all over again, and again, for the rest of his life. It’s one of the more popular stories of Greek mythology, known as the curse of Sisyphus.
Sometimes, I find myself in Sisyphus’ shoes, although I’m pretty sure the ancient Greeks didn’t wear any. I’ve been told as a child that if I could get out of school with good grades, I would get to be in a good University, which would allow me to live happily ever after. I accepted that notion and worked really hard. I got into a good University. Now what? “Oh, you need to do well at University so you can get a good job before you get to the happy part”, I’ve been told. I acceded and did what I was supposed to. But I was constantly unhappy and discontent with myself.
Finding Contentment Within Myself
It took me a few years of working an unfulfilling job, a great deal of reading the works of wise men, and battles with addictions, to realize a simple yet profound truth. If you cannot find fulfillment within yourself, you’re not gonna find it in some external material, goal, or aspiration. Because, as soon as you reach that goal, or satisfy the desire, it’s going to want more out of you. More things will begin to seem important, meaningful, and obligatory. The goal post will always move, and contentment is always fleeting.
When I was addicted to cigarettes and weed, I would always tell myself that if I smoked one more cigarette, or took one more hit of the bong, if I could meaninglessly wank off just one more time, I would feel better. That would make me feel at peace. And that worked. For like an hour. And then slowly the dread crept in, and I needed that ‘just one cigarette’ once more. It took me years to battle the addiction, and I could only overcome it once I paid close attention to my thoughts, and understood myself better.
But this human condition of always wanting more isn’t exclusively applicable to addiction. Although I believe that we’re all addicted to something to some degree, whether it’s sugar, social media, substances, or work, we don’t always take away the apparent lesson it has to offer: depending on external stuff to satiate our desires will always leave us wanting more, and as a result, discontent with ourselves.
I realized that these ad hox fixes weren’t gonna solve the deeper problem of disconnection to myself. I needed to find happiness and contentment within myself and get my dopamine kick from seeing myself progress towards the goals I set, and not from the goals or end-products themselves. The goalpost was irrelevant. If I fixate on the goal itself, the post was always bound to move, once I reach it or approach it. And I think many of us are stuck in this loop of chasing something that would never bring us the ultimate eternal bliss that we’re after.
You Don’t Need to Have More to Be Happy
I used to buy into the notion of deriving happiness from having more. A bigger house, a better car, or fancier equipment. But, as you guessed, it didn’t really work.
Daniel Markovits, a law professor Daniel Markovits has shown, that even the winners in our achievement-obsessed culture — the ones who make it to the top: to the elite universities, reap the highest salaries, find that the life of the meritocratic elite is dominated by work and they face an unending pressure to work with “crushing intensity” to maintain the income and status that have come to seem like prerequisites for the lives they want to lead.
This image shows that a study done over a period of 50 years reveals that even though the average income tripled during that period, it did not really affect the happiness index. It seems like once your basic needs of life are met(basic being a relative term here), consuming more stuff and accumulating more wealth isn’t really going to make you happier.
The key takeaway is that no material incentive is going to sustainably provide you with contentment and meaning. Yes, you might be very happy about that new Xbox you just got, but after playing on it a few times, the anomaly wears off, and you’ll end up wanting more. So the best we can do is to set goals that aren’t susceptible to this trap. When you’re content with what you have and get your dopamine hit from seeing yourself develop into a better human being or a better version of yourself, that is going to be a lot more sustainable.
Focus More on the Process and Not the Goal
This isn’t a novel idea. It has been disseminated well into the public sphere and has been circulating widely, thanks to people like James Clear, whose work has been seminal in understanding how we can change our habits. His suggestion is to focus on the system rather than the goal itself if you want better results. I want to reiterate the idea and say that the process, which is the system in motion, is more important in deriving happiness and contentment than the end goal itself.
As a hobby musician, I notice something interesting when I’m learning something new on the guitar or the piano. When starting out to learn a piece, I just want to get the first few bars right. Once I’m there, I’m not impressed anymore with the first few bars, and I want to get to the end of the verse. Then, once I’m able to play till the verse without any mistakes, I move the goal to something else, like some improv bars in between, or maybe a solo. So, my goal is always moving, but I’m still enjoying the process of learning and playing music. When I’m stuck, I know that this process has worked before, and if I just keep practicing enough, I know that the threshold will be passed and I’ll break that barrier.
I try to apply this thinking to other kinds of learning as well. When I’m trying to learn a new language, I try not to focus on the end goal, but place my belief in the solidity of the process. I know that if I keep doing the small things right, and practice consistently, I am going to get to the point where I wanted to be. But then, I would not be so happy upon reaching the goal if I was just focusing on the goal rather than the process.
I hope you can take away some lessons from Sisyphus’ misery too and make his suffering meaningful.
