Why We Need: Satisfaction

“The basic human reaction to pleasure is not satisfaction, but rather craving for more. Hence, no matter what we achieve, it only increases our craving, not our satisfaction.” Yuval Noah Harari

Recently, a friend sent me an article he found interesting, one he thought I would enjoy as well. Along with his recommendation, the title’s allure—promising a glimpse into “the secret of satisfaction”—drew me in, and, being that it was digital content, the hyperlinks drew me in further.

Some forty-five minutes later—after numerous click-throughs to topics ranging from Mick Jagger and Thomas Aquinas to evolutionary psychology, Wikipedia’s list of all NBA championship results, and a quick check of Naples, Italy on Google Maps—the article’s promise of enlightenment left me more dissatisfied than ever with my time-management abilities.

Be that as it may, the article was intriguing…and insightful. It offered helpful observations (“Getting off the achievement treadmill is hard. It feels dangerous”) and actionable suggestions (“instead of adding more and more, start taking things away”; “pay attention to smaller and smaller things”).

As far as I could discern through the haze of hyperlink citations and suggested Tweets, the thesis of the piece was this: “our natural state is dissatisfaction, punctuated by brief moments of satisfaction”, but we can overcome “Mother Nature’s cruel hoax” through certain life hacks that will outwit our “neurobiological instincts” and lift us off the “hedonic treadmill”.

Admittedly, it sounded great, though in the moment I couldn’t quite decide if the thought of staying on the treadmill or lifehacking my way off it felt more exhausting.

And, quite obviously (since you’re reading an article I wrote about reading that article), it got me thinking about “satisfaction”.

The idea of being “satisfied” is both a dream and a dread for many of us. On the one hand, it’s all we really want; to wit, a common, concise definition of satisfaction is “getting what we want”. But on the other hand, we’ve been coached (or coaxed) into believing that being satisfied is the first step down a slippery slope upon which careers tumble, companies stumble, and empires crumble.

Indeed, it seems that our very conception of what satisfaction is may be enough to keep us from ever experiencing it. And when something feels like a trap, it’s probably wisdom to suspect there may be a conspiracy afoot.

In which case, investigation is warranted.

Start with the word. Satisfaction, in a personal sense, is generally understood to mean the pleasure derived from one’s wishes, expectations, or needs being met. That definition alone hints to us that suspicion is warranted: the squishiness of it reeks of entrapment. What type of pleasure…arousal? Revenge? What size wishes? The two-year-old demanding the potato chip? The fifty-year-old demanding professional respect? What expectations—the ones rooted in reason, or ones anchored in emotions still being generated by childhood traumas? What needs? Our need to breathe, or our “need” to bloviate? Perhaps each of them, depending on the moment…or our mood.

But what does the word really communicate? Our English term is derived from the Latin satisfactionem, which in the medieval period meant “to do penance”, but originally meant “to satisfy a creditor”. It is the combination of satis (“enough”) and facere (“to do, to perform”). In essence, the state of satisfaction is to have fully repaid a loan. The corollary is that dissatisfaction is to remain a debtor.

And therein lies the dilemma for so many of us: in our dissatisfaction—with ourselves, with others, with life—we’re essentially striving to satisfy some debt, to repay some loan that’s still outstanding. The trouble is, we don’t fully know the terms of the obligation; we only sense that we owe something. And we don’t truly know who it is we’re making repayments to—who we are trying to “satisfy”.

Perhaps our “creditor” is a parent (alive or not), to demonstrate we’re “enough”. Maybe a spouse, to earn attention or make amends. Possibly our children, to make them whole for the time or affection we took from them. At times, surely, it’s our social media feed, and the revolving credit account we’ve opened to finance the Joneses’ digital life.

Or, it’s something deeper, something within us.

A brief history lesson: each one of us is part of a family lineage that extends back millennia to a time and place untouched by dissatisfaction. Until it wasn’t. When that first whisper of modern advertising entered—“there’s something you don’t have, and if you have it you will feel better”—the first hint of dis-satis-faction entered the garden.

When our forebears acted upon it, the cost became clear: the forever interest-only mortgage of mortality. In an instant, everything we humans looked on, thought about, or touched was transformed from “good” and “enough” to “not good enough”.

The transition from the immortal satis-faction of “always enough” to the mortal dis-satis-faction of “never enough” was complete. Death, with its continual depreciation, decay, and despair, became our creditor, one whose loans we can never satisfy.

But there is One who can. Indeed, One who did.

This One has taken our debt and satisfied it, the first Son among many sons to experience the resurrection from the dissatisfied debt bondage of death. To experience the satisfaction of repayment being completed, and freedom beginning anew. A freedom that will only increase, that will receive rather than remit interest payments over time.

This is the invitation: to live in this satisfaction. How?

By returning, every day, to a Father’s table that is always enough—no longer paying excess interest on what we’ve wasted, nor striving to satisfy an imaginary debt. Just re-turning our hearts and minds to the table already prepared.

By receiving, every moment, the delight of a Father for his son, a delight that elevates and empowers through invitation into the sublime satisfaction of immortality.

And after returning and receiving, by resting. Finally.

That is satisfaction. Guaranteed.

“A satisfied person despises honey, but to a hungry person any bitter thing is sweet.”
Proverbs 27:7