I Will Never be Satisfied
When ordinary but happy feels like a prison, not a privilege
Six humans walk in to a bar…
We’re somewhere in Manhattan. It’s dark, it’s rainy, and a Giants game is on tv.
The connections between us are the epitome of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, that is to say, loose at best.
We’re all mid 20’s, post-graduate school, unmarried, beginning our careers.
There’s a guy. He sits across from me. Not one for small talk, he pours himself a beer from the pitcher in the center of the table and looking dead to nuts in my eyes, says “I’ve got a question for the group.”
“Would you rather be miserable and change the world or happy and ordinary?”
Fuuuuucccckkkkk.
I don’t want to play this game, and he knows it. Because he knows my secret.
It’s his secret too.
He glances around at the other beer drinkers, people he barely knows and nods to give the first one the floor. To a woman, they answer predictably.
“Happy”
“What kind of question is this…clearly happy.”
“Wouldn’t we all like to change the world, but we’re not House here. Happy.”
“I’d like to contribute something of value, but I don’t think you have to be miserable to do that. Happy.”
His gaze falls on me, a slight smile playing on his face. He knows my truth and is taunting me to see if I’m brave enough to own it.
I take a sip of my beer. Putting the glass back on the table, I meet his eyes.
“Miserable,” I say. Not one to be baited without getting something in return, I shoot back,
“And you?”
“Same,” he affirms.
It’s our Achilles heel, the thing responsible for the constant chemistry between us, the knowing that we are different, that there is no draw for us in happiness. Only relevance, impact, and, potentially, pain.
Fast forward twenty years. The guy is now just a Facebook friend, married with a kid and a career just like me. That I can tell, he hasn’t changed the world. I don’t trust Facebook to be a judge of his happiness or misery.
His life appears to be…ordinary. As does mine.
And by all standards its a beautiful life. I am blessed beyond measure with the basics - financial stability, good health, friends and family who put up with me. I’ve had immense opportunities to further my education, change careers, meet important and famous people, and see (some) of the world.
Right now, I’m a mom, and a writer, and a podcast producer, and the house sitter, dog walker, vacation planner, birthday present buyer, etc.
My days are not the same, but they are dictated by when I have to drop my daughter off at school and pick her up. The demarcation of weekday to weekend is dramatic, and while I try to infuse some fun and spontaneity in those latter two days, that is largely due to some mild panic about an uninterrupted 48-hours with a six year old.
Our life is small, fortunate, and…ordinary.
I have not changed the world, and at times, I have to physically run to outpace the feelings of boredom and bitterness. The internal itch whose salve would require a massive departure from all things ordinary and complete upending of my perfectly small, perfectly fortunate life threatens to undo me.
It is an upending I’m unwilling to initiate at the expense of my daughter and my husband and all of the other people who’ve helped create and support the exceedingly rich life I already lead.
I am on an exhausting seesaw of guilt and desire, fear and yearning, emptiness and passion and, recently, fragility and legacy.
Before bedtime, we’ve taken to watching ten minutes of the musical Hamilton on Disney+. Inspired by an epic library haul one Friday afternoon that included a stack of books about Alexander Hamilton, I casually mentioned that there was a “movie” about Hamilton. My daughter, eyes wide at the sound of one of her favorite words, squealed this ungodly high-pitched noise appreciated only by other six year old girls and, jumping up and down, yelled “Can we watch it?” “Can we watch it puh-leeeeeeeaaase?”
Unprepared for this overreaction, I responded as any poised parent might…
“Uh, sure.”
And so we are eeking through one of my favorite musicals two to three songs at a time. I haven’t watched it since my husband was in the hospital shortly after his accident and therefore forgot about some of the more disturbing parts that, of course, when consumed by a six-year old, lead to questions I can’t answer and the strong potential for Revolutionary War-inspired nightmares.
But, her fascination with the story of Alexander and particularly, his wife, Eliza, have me keeping my word that we can watch to the end.
One night, as we cuddled to the scene where Alexander meets Eliza for the first time, I smiled as my daughter stared dreamily at the tv. Eliza’s strong soprano coming through clearly…"Helpless”…the love song to her new husband.
The play progressed and the next song came on.
Still lost in the love story, my daughter was unprepared for the power of Angelica’s voice. Eliza’s sister belting out the line,
“He will never be satisfied. I will never be satisfied.”
My daughter heard a powerhouse performer.
I heard my soul speak.
Throughout the course of my life, I have asked that fateful question, “misery or happiness, change the world or be ordinary” to a handful of people. To most, I’m sure it sounds like an influencer’s Instagram quiz. Answer and you get to see what everyone else says.
But it’s not.
For me, its a Rorschach test of sorts, the most basic personality assessment. I’m asking out of curiosity, yes, but also out of defiance. Who besides me will have the balls to admit they are not satisfied with their one ordinary life?
If I’m honest, though, and I try to be here even when I can’t be elsewhere, I am asking because I am frantic to find eyes that look back at mine with understanding. Desperation and emptiness dotting their pupils too.
I want to know that I am not such a horrible human that I can’t appreciate all that has been given to me and all that I have worked for. That I am not alone in constantly thinking “is this it?”. That I cannot be the only one fearful that I might be wasting my one big glorious chance to change the world on safe, normal, respected…ordinary.
I mostly get what I expect…”Happy, for sure.”
Every now and again, I can see it though, a flash at the outside edge of the eye, a hint of fear as their lips contract, an anxious cough before the answer spills out. “Uhhh…what kind of question is that? Happy, of course.”
Of course.
A year ago, I finally had the luxury of listening to myself again. After four years of trauma and tragedy, for once, I was ready to accept ordinary, craved it in fact. I wanted what I dubbed “normal people problems.” The car needs an oil change, the bathroom outlet won’t work, my daughter has a birthday party and we forgot to buy a present.
For awhile, happy found me in the ordinary, a welcome retreat from the life-gutting nature of what we had been through.
But the itch came back. An annoyance at first and one I could easily outrun. But it built to the point where I had scratched metaphorical canyons down my arms trying to ease the sensation. The concept of stabbing myself in the eyeball became not a comedic aside but a serious consideration.
Right before I left for Costa Rica last February, the desperation was at an all time high. Daily, I had to reign in the anger, jealousy and resentfulness that threatened to attack every person remotely close to me. In real time, that meant I settled for unnecessary nag to my daughter and bordering-on-bitch to my husband. It was unpleasant for everyone.
I went to Costa Rica to make up with joy, yes, but I also went to figure out how to find joy in the life I already had.
See, I’m tired of chasing the life I don’t have, have never had, and knowingly will never pursue. I am not going to build a well in an African village like one of my scholarship classmates, or become the designer for Beyonce’s sister like another. I understand now that I cannot change healthcare, although at least I tried on that one, and that starting a nature retreat to help veterans with PTSD may actually happen, but one day, not this day.
I don’t want to live the entirety of my life requiring some extra strength dose of Calamine lotion to survive. I want to find joy where it lives in the nooks and crannies of the small, blessed, fortunate life I already live.
I did not, in fact, figure out how to do that while I was there. But that does not mean it was a wasted trip. What I did bring home is the ability to amplify the extraordinary that naturally exists in the ordinary. How to make monkey sounds the music of my morning. How to delight in food, beautiful, colorful, yummy food. How to get lost in writing and to celebrate the magic that comes out the other side. How to marvel at the Universe at work, open to the times that what feels like coincidence may, in fact, be intentional.
I learned how to make an offering of myself…my time, my skills, my memories, my ears, my writing, my embrace, my existence and trust that to the recipient that gift is as nourishing as a well of water in the desert.
I learned how to look for joy, to overplay it, to make it mean more than it might otherwise and to hold on to that as proof of the possibility that joy, simple joys, can be enough.
I still feel itchy. It’s back down to mosquitoes in a Southern summer level, not fire ant foot attack status. But I feel it. I know its there.
When I feel it building, I say “I need a vacation,” a euphemistic way of triggering to myself and my husband that I’m in trouble.
I know I can’t get rid of it; I’m now certain that even if its just a personality flaw, its one I must acknowledge as mine.
My writer brain wonders if the solution here isn’t just a rewrite, a developmental edit that alters the options available to the reader.
The original question presumes there is no option to change the world and be ordinary. Or even change the world and be happy. And since I am writing the novel of this one big beautiful life, I have editorial license to issue a different challenge, a new choice, to change the world in the ordinary. To find happiness in being a change maker. To do big, hard, bold things right where I am.
I don’t know how to step in to that yet, or whether it will take care of all the itchies. But I feel confident its the right approach, the better reframe.
Misery is not a requirement for relevance. And happiness is not promised to those who opt for ordinary. We are all in charge of our one big beautiful chance on this earth.
And it will be what we make of it.
That was an interesting and thought-provoking question. My thoughts took me down a different path than what was intended by the person asking. Everything in me screamed that this was a zero sum question, and I am so happy you reframed it from one or the other into both/and. I believe it is in following our path of joy and happiness that we have the power to change the world. And you, dear Jess, have shown us how to do that. Loved the post! 💕
You already know that I share some of your frustration and that feeling of being pulled in two directions at once. You have articulated that struggle so clearly here, and – more impressively – owned it. We are conditioned by the façade of social media, to never, ever say anything that might make us appear less than infinitely grateful for what we have. But while I do encourage gratitude in myself every day, it seems both insincere and limiting to pretend that we don’t sometimes want more. This is such a deep topic, and a difficult question. You have set my wheels turning.