Dissatisfaction

The movie, Barbie (2023), is a fantasy/comedy about a group of dolls who live in the perfect world of "Barbieland." One night, the dolls are having a dance party when Barbie starts thinking about the uncomfortable reality of death.

All the barbies are dancing to pop music in the barbie dream house saying, “Oh, isn’t this the most beautiful day! Aren’t we the most beautiful people? Doesn’t it feel like this is just going to go on like this forever?” And then the main Barbie, Margot Robbie’s character says, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” and the record scratches and the music stops. The other Barbies stare at her aghast and angry, as if to say, that topic doesn’t belong in Barbieland. And Barbie kind of covers it up and says, “I’m just dying... to keep dancing!” and the music plays and the Barbies go back to their fantasy world.

The next morning, Barbie wakes up with bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. The rest of the movie is about her quest to discover what it means to be alive outside of perfect Barbieland.

Preaching Angle: Just like in Barbieland, it can be uncomfortable to bring up the topic of death. But we need to face the reality of death to grow spiritually and emotionally.

Clip available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImFQpKImJqQ

We all carry the memories of unspoken words and missed opportunities. The quiet echoes of regret and the whispered reminder that perfection is elusive and regret is a constant companion. So, it’s no surprise that a new poll finds that most Americans are concerned about the road not taken in their lives. And when it comes to regrets, people are more likely to dwell on things they didn’t do than the things they have done.

A survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, which found that only 11% of Americans don’t have any regrets. Among the regrets the majority of us have are the following:

Not speaking up (40%)

Not visiting family or friends enough (36%)

Not pursuing our dreams (35%)

The missed chances to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip

On the other hand, the top actions Americans regret doing include:

Spending money or purchasing something they later regret (49%)

Fighting with friends or family (43%)

Making an unnecessary comment (36%)

32% of baby boomers have a regret that spans three decades and still crosses their minds an average of three times per month. While the oldest regret millennials’ is only about 11 years-old, they fret about it on average almost once per week, more than any other generation.

Researcher Arthur C. Books told the following story about how we all can benefit from self-control and waiting.

My father-in-law, with whom I was very close, spent most of his life on the same working-class street in Barcelona’s El Clot neighborhood. Born in 1929, he saw Spain’s bloody civil war taking place literally in front of his house. His family experienced a lot of suffering. Some died; others spent years in jail or were forced into exile. He himself spent a year in a refugee camp, an experience that affected him for the rest of his life. Every time he wanted to make a point about society or culture, he always started with: “Well, during the civil war …”

One evening, a few months before he died, he read in his local paper an article of mine about unhappiness. “You have a lot of complicated theories,” he told me, “But the real reason people are unhappy is very simple.” I asked him to elaborate. “They don’t enjoy their dinner,” he responded. I asked him what he meant. “Well, during the civil war, we were always hungry,” he said. “But one day a year—Christmas—we got to eat whatever we wanted, and we were so happy. Today, people snack all day long, are never hungry, don’t enjoy their dinners, and aren’t happy—even on Christmas.”

He was not wrong in his main contention: Happiness rises, paradoxically, when you do not get whatever you want, whenever you want it. Rather, well-being requires that you discipline your will and defer your gratifications. Understanding this and taking action to change your habits can make you a much happier person.

If you find yourself being more impatient than ever before when interacting with people in customer service roles—or if you’ve noticed other people having a shorter fuse and snapping more quickly—you’re not alone. Lines can be a source of anger, frustration, and arguments. Twenty-seven percent of consumers get annoyed by fellow shoppers when in line and 19% of shoppers have even had an argument with a partner or friend in a line.

The vast majority of consumers associate waiting in line with negative emotions. Nearly 67% of the consumers surveyed report feeling impatient, bored, annoyed, frustrated, or disrespected when they have to wait.

Notably, impatience skyrocketed this year (2024)—increasing by 176%. This suggests that consumers are shifting from boredom and annoyance towards impatience. This finding is unsurprising given our current social climate. Technology is increasing expectations for instant gratification while high levels of anxiety are shortening fuses. Surveys have shown that 25% would only wait a maximum of two minutes. Fifty-nine percent would wait no longer than four minutes. Seventy-three percent would abandon their purchase if they had to queue for more than five minutes.

Furthermore, the widespread transition to remote work during the pandemic resulted in reduced face-to-face interaction. And with a decrease in this time spent with our fellow humans, it has likely been more difficult to develop empathy and patience. Too much screen time may have caused “keyboard courage” to bleed into our day-to-day conversations, leaving us more abrupt and even rude in our communications.

Another cause of heightened emotions is the overall challenges people in the world are facing, including polarization, war, the underlying stress of inflation, supply chain issues, or looming economic uncertainty.

All of these factors are pushing people to their limits and resulting in an increase in burnout, frustration, and impatience in their interactions with others.

Best-selling author Arthur C. Brooks is an expert on happiness research. But he also honestly shares about his own struggle with finding true satisfaction in life:

I have fallen into the trap of believing that success would fulfill me. On my 40th birthday I made a bucket list of things I hoped to do or achieve. They were mainly accomplishments only a wonk could want: writing books and columns about serious subjects, teaching at a top school, traveling to give lectures and speeches, maybe even leading a university or think tank. Whether these were good and noble goals or not, they were my goals, and I imagined that if I hit them, I would be satisfied.

I found that list when I was 48 and realized that I had achieved every item on it. But none of that had brought me the lasting joy I’d envisioned. Each accomplishment thrilled me for a day or a week—maybe a month, never more—and then I reached for the next rung on the ladder.

I’d devoted my life to climbing those rungs. I was still devoting my life to climbing—working 60 to 80 hours a week to accomplish the next thing, all the while terrified of losing the last thing. The costs of that kind of existence are obvious, but it was only when I looked back at my list that I genuinely began to question the benefits—and to think seriously about the path I was walking.

And what about you? Your goals are probably very different from mine, and perhaps your lifestyle is too. But the trap is the same. Everyone has dreams, and they beckon with promises of sweet, lasting satisfaction if you achieve them. But dreams are liars. When they come true, it’s … fine, for a while. And then a new dream appears.

Does a pay raise bring happiness? Sometimes it will, but the level of happiness is often tied to how we compare our salaries to others.

According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, people’s happiness with their pay is strongly tied to how it compares with the pay of others around them, say researchers who study compensation. Sometimes, those comparisons rankle.

Executives are more likely to leave their companies if their pay is low compared with other top bosses, according to a 2017 study in the journal Human Resource Management. Comparisons matter closer to home, too. Living in an area where people tend to make more money than you is linked to being less happy.

A 30% raise made Ryan Powell less happy at work. Powell, a 38-year-old finance director for a manufacturer in western North Carolina, received that pay bump in 2022. He had been hoping for more based on the salary information he had heard from recruiters, peers in the industry, and his M.B.A. cohort.

The initial thrill of the raise lasted about three months, he said. “The further I got into it, the more I was realizing that I was anchored to the higher number.”

People living in remote Indigenous communities are as happy as those in wealthy developed countries despite having “very little money,” according to new scientific research. This could challenge the widely held perception that “money buys happiness.”

Researchers who interviewed 2,966 people in 19 Indigenous local communities across the world found that on average they were as happy – if not happier – as the average person in high-income western countries.

According to researchers, “Surprisingly, many populations with very low monetary incomes report very high average levels of life satisfaction, with scores similar to those in wealthy countries. I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives.”

The study found that people in the 19 isolated communities reported an average “life satisfaction score” of 6.8 out of 10 “even though most of the sites have estimated annual monetary incomes of less than US $1,000 per person.”

This is roughly the same as the 6.7 average life satisfaction score for all countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Surprisingly, four of the small communities reported average happiness scores of more than 8, which is higher than that found in Finland, the highest-rated country with an average of 7.9.

The report says its findings proves that wealth – as generated by industrialized economies – is not fundamentally required for humans to lead happy lives.

An insightful Aperture video reveals the sad reality that our happiness, or lack of, is always at a regular baseline. It only fluctuates slightly despite all our attempts at bliss and euphoria.

You wake up in the morning and go to work. You spend eight hours working away at your desk on a job you once loved but now kind of just tolerate. It's 5:00 p.m., you go home, eat dinner, and watch TV, only to do it all over again the next day. You play sports or catch up with friends on the weekend and life's good, but you still feel like something is missing.

Now imagine you get that well deserved promotion and a healthy raise and suddenly you're going on those vacations you once dreamt of. Driving a nicer car, receiving more status and respect in the workplace. Your quality of life has been significantly upgraded and finally you feel like you're fulfilling your potential. Fancy restaurants, rubbing elbows with influential people, your life feels new and almost foreign compared to where you came from.

Yet in a year or so your once brand-new Porsche just becomes your daily driver. All the imported sushi starts to taste the same and while you still frequent white sandy beaches and pristine ski slopes, these places have lost their allure.

You've completely changed your life but you're still in the same position you were in before you got the promotion. Those things that used to excite you have become stale, mundane, and boring. The reason why you'll never be happy is called “hedonic adaptation.” Hedonic adaptation is the tendency to return to a base level of happiness even when undergoing profound periods of positive or negative change.

According to a survey, 37% of Americans think billionaires are terrible role models, and 49% said they have overall negative feelings towards them. And the heat is felt most prominently by the big-name tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos.

But despite the negative feelings, people still admire and look up to some of these individual figures. And it’s not because of just their financial success; a 2021 study found that people who stand against a class of extremely wealthy people still tend to admire individual billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Margaret O’Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington, says “The secret of Silicon Valley has been the storytelling.” She describes intense admiration of tech billionaires as kind of “a religion of entrepreneurship.” With the lack of presence of other role models and declining faith in other institutions like the government or churches or even science, people want to find a myth to believe in that will give them comfort.

When you have these really exciting stories of the startup company in your dorm room or garage that then becomes this trillion-dollar company, this exciting rags to riches story really fits into an American narrative that predates Silicon Valley. Those stories are exceptional, to be clear, but I think the fault is presuming that anyone can do this.

Another story within the tech billionaire narrative that appeals to masses is that of disruption. O’Mara said, “This is a nation founded on revolution, so being a rebel, not bowing to authority and being your own boss is kind of cool.”

Richard R. John, professor of business history and journalism at Columbia University calls the hype surrounding tech billionaires a cult of personality. He says:

A cult of personality is the deliberate glorification of a specific public figure. Throughout history, cult of personality hype of billionaire figures has usually been propagated through journalists and news media. But with the founding of social media, it grew massively through its unprecedented reach. It’s no longer regional, it’s now national and even international.

Theft—or "shrinkage" as the retail industry calls it—is a big problem for stores that use self-checkout kiosks. The machines have created a new kind of "partial shrink" where someone pays for most of their stuff, but skips a few items.

One study revealed that about 6.7% of orders had some items that went unscanned (including accidentally)—far higher than the typical 0.3% shrink rate for a fully-staffed checkout. It might not surprise you that in a survey of 5,000 shoppers, the majority admitted to accidentally bagging an item that didn't scan at the kiosk.

But something the survey revealed that might be surprising? Wealthier people were most likely of all to intentionally steal, they told surveyors. Of people who admitted to stealing, the biggest group was among the 18% of people with household incomes of more than $100,000. (When considering people with household incomes under $35,000, 14% said they'd purposely taken an item without scanning it.)

Terrence Schulman a lawyer of the Schulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Shopping and Hoarding said, “I want to admit that I don't know what the truth is, but I'll give you a few theories”:

I think that a lot of people who are higher-income and more well-to-do probably aren't quite as delighted to have all this self-service kind of stuff, like checkout or having to pump your own gas. I'm generalizing, but maybe for wealthier people, it's just another hassle — or it's kind of beneath them. So that's one possibility: that it's kind of like a silent protest. Like, why do I have to do this?

Another thought is that scanning a $10 item for a wealthy person, that's like a penny to them. So, there's already a different kind of attitude about money.

There might be even a subconscious kind of thought of: “Hey, if I got caught, if I ever did get in trouble, I have the resources — I could hire an attorney, or I could call somebody. I know how to make something happen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Having wealth often leads a person to an attitude of superiority, privilege, and a sense of being “above the law.” But all of us need to guard against making excuses for unlawful or immoral behavior as though we deserve it.

A Gen Z journalist named Rikki Schlott wrote an essay to explain her generation to parents of Gen Z children. She called the essay “her best shot to explain the malaise of my generation.”

Gen Z has inherited a post-hope world, stripped of what matters. Instead, we have been offered a smorgasbord of easy and unsatisfying substitutes. All the things that have traditionally made life worth living — love, community, country, faith, work, and family — have been “debunked.”

“These are the sentiments I hear often from peers”:

• Love — “Monogamy is so outdated.”
• Community — “I have enough friends online.”
• Country — “I’m embarrassed to be an American.”
• Work — “I’m quiet-quitting.”
• Family — “I’m not bringing kids into this melting world.”
• Faith — “My parents are such naive Bible thumpers. By the way, what’s your star sign?”

Everything that matters has been devalued for Zoomers, leaving behind a generation with gaping holes where the foundations of a meaningful life should be. They’re desperately grasping for alternative purpose-making systems, all of which fall short.

I’m not saying all Zoomers should become church-going office drones who churn out babies and never question their country. But our dismal mental health records and the scars on our wrists seem to indicate that becoming faithless digital vagabonds is just not working out for us.

Mike Tyson is one of the greatest boxers of all time. Over his career, “Iron Mike” had 50 wins, including 44 knockouts, and only six losses. Coming from a difficult childhood, during which he was surrounded by crime and poverty, he escaped his circumstances through a laser-like focus on his dream of athletic greatness. And he realized that dream in 1986 by becoming the world heavyweight champion at the age of 20.

Despite his success and fame, Tyson was dogged by crises, failed relationships, and legal troubles, including allegations of domestic violence and nearly three years in prison in the 1990s after he was convicted on a charge of rape. He achieved all his ambitions of riches and renown, but a happy life seemed to elude him.

This might seem ironic or contradictory to some. To Tyson, however, it was neither. “You almost have to give your happiness up to accomplish your goals,” he reflected in a 2020 interview.

That is what we might call the Tyson Paradox. Building a good life requires us to have goals that keep us focused, enthusiastic, and out of trouble. But actually, attaining those goals might not give us the payoff we imagined, and could in fact bring us misery. Although most of us will never see the highs and lows that Mike Tyson experienced, we can all easily fall into our own version of the same trap.

In an interview on Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast, actor Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight Schrute in the TV series The Office, said the following:

When I signed up for The Office, it’s like, “I want to buy a house.” I wasn’t thinking about giving laughter as a therapeutic remedy and a balm and a salve to a hurting populace … I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough.

This is what I was looking at: I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, making lots of money working with Steve Carell, and Jenna Fisher, and John Krasinski … I’m on one of the great TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t enjoying it. I was thinking about, “Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a movie career?” (He explained later in the interview how he couldn’t stop chasing the dragon that is success.)

When I was on The Office, I was making hundreds of thousands. I wanted millions. I was a TV star, but I wanted to be a movie star. It was never enough. Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and never enough has helped us as a species.

Three members of a local family set off on a long-term camping adventure, intent on living off the grid. Their endeavor took a fatal turn when their three decomposed bodies were discovered recently at a remote campsite.

Gunnison County Coroner Michael Barnes identified the deceased as Rebecca Vance, 42; her 14-year-old son whose name is undisclosed for privacy reasons, and Christine Vance, 41, all from Colorado Springs. Trevala Jara, a Vance stepsister, revealed they didn't disclose their destination before embarking on the journey. The family likely began camping in July 2022, and eventually succumbed to the elements during the harsh winter months.

Friends and family say that Rebecca Vance was motivated by an intense dissatisfaction with the direction of ongoing world and local events—including fallout from the pandemic—and sought an isolated life to shield her family from external influences. The Vances remained committed to their off-grid choice, despite attempts to dissuade them. “We tried to stop them,” said Jara. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

The Vances attempted to subsist on canned food and prepackaged items. After the bodies were discovered, exact causes of death were uncertain, but malnutrition and exposure in the high-altitude winter remain undeniable factors. Gunnison County Sheriff Adam Murdie highlighted the unusual nature of the incident. “This is not a typical occurrence anywhere, by any means,” said Murdie.

Living off the grid, a pursuit of self-sufficiency without public utilities, has gained attention, though experts suggest that for people it's not economically practical. This tragedy underscores the challenges of disconnecting from society, emphasizing the need for balance between safety, security, and self-sufficiency.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As followers of Christ, we are called to be a united family, supporting, and uplifting one another. Let us not retreat into isolation, but rather open our hearts to the blessings of fellowship and community.

The General Social Survey asks people to rate their happiness levels. Between 1990 and 2018 the share of Americans who put themselves in the lowest happiness category increased by more than 50 percent. And that was before the pandemic.

The really bad news is abroad. Each year Gallup surveys roughly 150,000 people in over 140 countries about their emotional lives. Experiences of negative emotions—related to stress, sadness, anger, worry, and physical pain—hit a record high in (2021).

Gallup asks people in this survey to rate their lives on a scale from zero to 10, with zero meaning you’re living your worst possible life and 10 meaning you’re living your best. Sixteen years ago, only 1.6 percent of people worldwide rated their life as a zero. As of (2021), the share of people reporting the worst possible lives has more than quadrupled.

In the summer of 1846, a party of 89 emigrants headed west along the 2,170-mile-long Oregon Trail. Tired, hungry, and trailing behind schedule, they decided at Fort Bridger, Wyoming to travel to their final destination in California by shortcut. The “Hastings Cutoff” they chose was an alternative route that its namesake, Lansford Hastings, claimed would shave at least 300 miles off the journey. The party believed this detour could save more than a month’s time. They were wrong.

Hastings Cutoff turned out to be a waterless, wide-open stretch of the Great Salt Lake Desert, that Hastings himself had never traveled. He simply looked at a map of the route that settler John C. Fremont had taken in 1845 across the Great Salt Lake Desert. Hastings then wrote a guidebook which said it would be quicker and easier than the standard trail. What Hastings didn’t realize was that Fremont almost died doing it.

By the time the Donner-Reed party finally reached the Sierra Nevada mountains, the shortcut had cost them weeks. Snow fell, trapping the travelers. This is when the most infamous (and deadly) part of their tale began. When members of the party began starving to death, survivors ate their remains to stay alive.

Shortcuts, supposedly easier ways of doing something, have often produced disastrous results. BLM Administrator Rob Sweeten said, “It’s obvious that [the emigrants] were in need of shorter routes to save time and money. Especially when you figure, they’re traveling 15 miles a day and facing challenges like changing weather and river conditions, and conflicts with Native Americans. Such difficulties often led to them attempting to find an easier route, shorter route. Though, in many cases, the new route turned out to be much harder.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Satan offered Jesus a disastrous shortcut that avoided the Cross (Matt. 4:1-10). We are also tempted in the same way to find the easy way to growth, status, or achievement. But God uses time, effort, and hardship in our lives to produce fully mature believers who are “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29).

Author and blogger Chris Winfield shares his thoughts on gratitude:

“Why did this have to happen to me?” It didn’t matter if it was something big (my dog gets cancer, good friend dies) or something little (flight is delayed, spilled something on my shirt). I was in a constant state of “poor me.” This all started to change once I began writing a gratitude list every single day for the past 34+ months and it has changed my life profoundly. Here are the 4 most important things I’ve learned on my gratitude journey:

1. It’s Hard at First: My mentor told me to text him three things that I am grateful for every day. Sounds pretty easy right? Well, it wasn’t. When you’ve lived most of your life not focusing on gratitude, it’s not so simple to change that.

2. There Is Always Something to Be Grateful For: No matter what was going on in my life (business problems, I was sick, someone cut me off in traffic) there was always something that I could find to be grateful for (my health, my daughter’s smile, etc.).

3. Gratitude Grows the More You Use It: My gratitude lists started off very basic and I struggled to find things to be grateful for (especially on the really tough days). But once I consistently took action, it became easier and easier.

4. It Can Help Stop Negative Thought Patterns: According to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, the average person has about 70,000 thoughts each day! There’s one big problem with this — the vast majority of these thoughts are negative. Gratitude can work to stop these negative thought patterns by replacing it with something positive.

Tony Hsieh (pronounced “Shay”) wanted to promote happiness and world peace. The brilliant business guru took over Zappos soon after it was founded. Under his leadership, he propelled it from a company on the verge of collapse to a successful online retail enterprise that sold to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009.

After the publication of his book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, he became a workplace-happiness guru. Thousands of business leaders, government officials, and Wall Street analysts flocked to Zappos’s downtown Las Vegas headquarters each year to take tours of its fun-filled offices and learn from Mr. Hsieh.

When Hsieh stepped down as CEO of Zappos in August of 2020, he thought he could achieve world peace. He moved to Park City, Utah, and wanted to attract intellectuals and artists with outsize salaries to create a sort of utopia. The blueprint for this model town could then be applied to other cities across the world.

But behind his swift success, Mr. Hsieh had for years struggled privately with social anxiety, autism, and alcohol abuse. Five months before his death, he suffered a breakdown after abusing drugs, in particular a drug that some describe as “spiritual.” He had also developed a fascination with fire. He liked fooling around with it and performing magic tricks. Candles were sometimes perched dangerously on his bedspread, and Mr. Hsieh kept a small fire ring in his bedroom that shot flames into the air without any barrier. Sadly, he died at 46 in November 2020, from injuries sustained in a house fire that was ruled an accident by local authorities.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This tragic tale shows what happens when we work for “happiness” or “world peace” or making a difference in the world without first dealing with our own sin and brokenness.

The General Social Society is a gold standard poll that has been tracking Americans’ attitudes since 1972. In about three years (2018 to 2021), Americans’ happiness cratered. According to one journalist, “The graph looks like the heart rate has plunged and they’re paging everyone on the floor to revive the patient.”

For the first time since the survey began (50 years ago), more people say they’re “not too happy” than say they’re “very happy.”

The actual statistics look like this:

“Very happy”

2018 – 31%

2021 – 19%

“Not too happy”

2018 – 13%

2021 – 24%

The popular Pursuit of Wonder YouTube channel (almost two million subscribers) gives an excellent concise insight on Existentialism. One segment is noteworthy:

Now more than ever we are exposed to a plethora of ideas about life. The Internet has made it so we can consume a seemingly unending amount of content on the topic of living most effectively. However, simultaneously, this access to information has also allowed the consumer to realize just how conflicting most ideas are.

In the West, the popularity of traditional religion (has) reduced as a result. (And) for many, the increasing access to information has revealed that the world is basically without any discernible truth, and most ideas about how to live are inconclusive and unreliable. It is fair to speculate that this could be a major contributing factor to the modern world's increasing levels of anxiety, cynicism, and disillusion.

Choosing between conflicting ideas of how to live has always been an issue for the individual. But in the modern world, where conflicting ideas are constantly smacking us in the face, we can often find ourselves failing in our attempt to find footing in this reality.

At birth it's as if we are all given a slab of clay. We get to choose what to mold it into. However, … there is no right or wrong way to mold the clay. Rather there are endless ways, all equally absurd, all equally meaningless.

You can watch the video here.