Dissatisfaction Is The Human Condition

Our life is a never-ending process of dealing with problems. Whether the problem is life-threatening like someone who doesn’t have enough food to nourish their body, or it’s an existential problem about not knowing what their life purpose is, our minds are always fixated on wanting to solve our problems.

And the reason is evolutionary: Embedded in us is a chronic dissatisfaction. Our emotional system is hardwired to always feel unsatisfied with where we’re at in life. It's the mechanism the mind uses to motivate us to support ourselves, meet our needs, keep us safe, and stay alive.

Knowing that our need for certain safety will never be met, we’ll always feel dissatisfied. We’ll always feel this itch that things aren’t complete or exactly how we want them to be. And it’s exactly this driving force that causes us to value the things that we do. 

To make that more concrete, let’s talk about the things that help us increase our sense of safety: 

1) Doing or not doing things out of fear - First and foremost, we want to ensure our physical safety. This involves not injuring ourselves, so we don’t attempt scary things… And not putting ourselves in harm’s way by being in places where others might try to hurt us or kill us.

2) Access to resources - Our future survival is dependent on our ability to secure the food and water we need to stay alive. So naturally we seek things like money and power that help us secure resources when they’re scarce.

3) Positive relationships and belonging - If we aren’t capable of securing the resources ourselves - because we are sick, injured, or otherwise - we need to rely on others to do it for us. And when we have people who care about us they’re more likely to help when we can’t help ourselves. It’s why we have a deep compulsion to be liked by others.

And again, given that certain safety is impossible to guarantee, we’ll always feel pulled to take some form of action to increase it.

Part of that is what gets misinterpreted about how we see our purpose. The pain that comes from not having an answer to the existential question of  “What am I doing with my life?” is just a byproduct of this same undertone. It’s an unrelenting itch. And if it’s not itching you to increase your sense of safety (because modern society does a good job of meeting our basic needs), it’ll start itching to increase your sense of meaning, causing you to feel dissatisfied about your life’s purpose.

The reason I have thought so much about it, is because I live it. I’m sharing this perspective because it has helped me realize that there’s nothing wrong with me for feeling dissatisfied despite the abundance I live in. It’s part of our programming, but the good news is there’s work we can do to reprogram our perception for our lives and feel good about who we are.

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