Maybe the Problem Is We Indulge Ourselves Too Much
The world has fully developed these days; stimulants for pleasure are easy to reach as they are at our fingertips, and it make people craze for pleasure. The craze has even reached such a level that people really depend on it. They are trying to keep their dopamine level at a high level by consuming dopamine-stimulating substances in unhealthy doses just to keep them hooked. But here’s where the paradox happens: the more people try to be happy, the more unhappy they become.
The Causes of Our Numbness
The feeling of excitement caused by the dopamine rush is great; that’s why people are really going after them. People often think getting excited is easy; they just follow what they want, going to things that they believe will make them happy. Often, this is what leads us to consumptive behavior; we tend to buy this and that to keep ourselves happy. In order to support our consumptive behavior, people are often willing to be slaves to fulfill their wants.
But pleasure is a strange thing. You have it once and it feels good; you have it twice and it feels better; you have it for the eighth time and it doesn’t seem pleasurable anymore. This phenomenon is explained simply by economists in their theory of diminishing marginal utility. In simple terms, the law of diminishing marginal utility means that the more of an item that you use or consume, the less satisfaction you get from each additional unit consumed or used (Investopedia, 2022).
This theory really explains why the more you indulge yourself, the more it loses its pleasure, and we become so numb to the excitement it used to give. At the same time, people tend to maintain their dopamine level at an optimal level. Since the old stimulant doesn’t kick like it used to, they have to double the dose to get the same excitement. Just like drug addicts, they double the dose to fill their dopamine cravings. The more we add the dose, the lastest dose becomes our baseline, and our standards towards pleasurable things increase until we reach the level that is impossible to reach anymore.
Our Fragility to Discomfort
Our obsession with dopamine-rewarding activities and our dependency on high levels of dopamine in our bodies make people lose their ability to deal with discomfort and endure hardship. Science found that, with repeated exposure to pleasurable stimuli, our capacity to tolerate pain decreases and our threshold for experiencing pleasure increases (Anna Lembke, 2021). These findings show that pleasure is bad rather than good for you.
That’s why we need to limit our dopamine-triggering substance consumption and allow our dopamine rate to descend. Allow ourselves to feel pain, to tolerate discomfort, and to resist the allure of constant pleasure. Feel the full spectrum of human experience. That’s the way to break free from the cycle of dissatisfaction and rediscover the simple joys that surround us each day.
Rejecting the Idea That Things Can Be Better
We all know that the nature of people is that we tend to pursue things that excite us. All the things we have today were things we used to hope for back then. We are convinced by the idea of making things better because it makes us happy. That’s why we work harder and improve ourselves, believing all of these would improve our quality of life.
But making improvements in any aspect of life is not easy work. We would engage in tremendous labor and torture ourselves in order to earn a bigger paycheck. We would hurt and starve ourselves to get our ideal body shape. Nobody said it would never work. It does work out, but is the price we pay for it really worth the results?
Having the idea of improvement is good, but our society’s addiction to improvement comes with a bad side. Wanting to improve anything is a way to say our current condition is far from ideal and we are dissatisfied with our current state. That’s why we want to improve something. The problem is that the more we want something to change, the more we are dissatisfied with our condition. Dissatisfaction is what prevents us from being truly happy with what we currently have.
Embracing and accepting that we cannot have it all is the key. We really cannot have it all, not because we cannot get what we want, but because what we want is limitless. With a spirit of improvement, we always seek more, even if we just get what we want. And it is impossible to be content with what we have if our minds keep wanting for more. Maybe it’s time for us to get rid of the idea that things can be better and start to embrace what we have today.
