“I just want you to be happy.”
This refrain that has echoed through generations of parenting has somehow escaped the mark of “cliche.” While ostensibly timeless, I question its validity. Is this really what we should want for others? And what about for ourselves?
Plotting the turning points of my life, a clear theme emerges. They did not arise from good fortune, nor even hard work. They arose from a slap in the face by truth and the ensuant changes in my life. When I cried because I lost my hard work because I didn’t click save. When my friends ridiculed me for my political opinions. When I screamed over a cliff, realizing that I wasn’t an individual. These moments were uncomfortable, incredibly so. Their emotional weight still holds so strong that I remember them to this day. These were some of the moments when I was least happy. But these were the moments that I learned to fight for truth — because the closer we get to truth, the closer we get to changing this world for the better.
It’s in the moments that I was dissatisfied — with myself, others, and the world — that I took steps to changing myself and environment for the better. When I was happy, things were stable. I fixated on the wise words of so many philosophies and religions, arguing that one can achieve happiness by accepting things, no matter what they are. Negative emotions meant I wasn’t practicing the lessons that I should have learned. This practice was comfortable.
Yet, this “immutable” lesson couldn’t keep pace with my evolving self. Admiring those who changed the world, I realized that their inspiration to create a difference wasn’t predicated on some philosophy of equanimity; it was predicated on their ability to recognize their own dissatisfaction.
Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr., and Steve Jobs are not the type of people that everyone likes. They are those who are disagreeable, who push boundaries because they need to be pushed. It was their voicing of their dissatisfaction with the way things were and their efforts to change the world by pursuing the truth that led them to create change. And it all starts in the mind.
The more I learn about the human mind, I am more awestruck about what we can accomplish. The power to think critically, create, and abstract is unparalleled in the known universe, and I am grateful that I get to experience it. But what is the superpower of the human brain that allows it to transcend what we even thought possible? What is the skill that, if honed properly, can unlock incredible potential for changing the world? The power to be dissatisfied.
I’ve written about value on my personal blog, and I tend towards the definition put forth by Naval Ravikant: that value is giving people what they want but don’t know how to get. And producing value begins with knowing what you don’t have and being dissatisfied about it. This is at odds with happiness.
Dissatisfaction does not support your mood — if anything, it takes away from it. Learning to be dissatisfied is a painful process. It trades the agreement that life’s purpose is to be happy with the agreement that life’s purpose is to pursue truth. And getting more in touch with your negative emotions may make you unhappy, but it also exposes truths that your rational brain couldn’t see.
That’s why dissatisfaction serves us: it can enable us to see the truth. Of course, pervasive pessimism on its own can’t do anything. It is dissatisfaction coupled with an unfaltering optimism for the way things could be that identifies and promotes truth. Maybe that’s what all those ancient traditions were telling me to do after all: accept everything as it comes, including emotions. Because it is those emotions — those transient lapses from our stable state — that lead us closer to the truth.
