The movie The Menu. Ralph Fiennes plays a renowned chef that serves an exclusive clientele on a private island. As the evening goes on, the guests’ past misdeeds come back to haunt them in devastating fashion. Of the many messages to garner from this film, the one that stuck with me is: Fiennes’ character was happiest when he was just a lowly cook making fast food cheeseburgers.
Imagine that: this famous chef, with patrons paying thousands for a table, a stable of cooks under him, is not happy. All the striving for money and recognition cannot compete with the complete satisfaction of cooking a good cheeseburger. Be cautious of the achievement treadmill! Much like the hedonic treadmill, the pitfall is the state of being unsatisfied until blank happens. What happens then is you’ll always be miserable, because there’s always something else to chase after achieving the current thing.
Look at car enthusiasts with vast collections, or the not-so-rich enthusiasts who can’t seem to keep the same car around (that’s me!). The endless desire for something new and different causes us to forget how much we wanted the thing we currently have, and how happy we were - momentarily, it would seem - when we first got it. If I could do it all over again, I probably would have kept the 2016 Mazda Miata I had until now.
There’s happiness to be found in stasis. There’s got to be a reasonable endpoint to all the striving. After which we chase after new goals for the sake of them alone, and not because they will bring additional units of happiness - because they won’t. Reflect on whether that new thing or achievement is really what you want. I think if Fiennes’ character can do it all over again, he would have kept making cheeseburgers as just another cook in a kitchen.
Indeed it is.