Commercials play to our restlessness and they even help to create it. If they succeed we feel a need for their product by the time their pitch is over. We want better health, smoother hands, a nicer smell or a bigger burger.
One class potato chip commercial shows a boy boarding a bus with a big bag of their crunchies. As the boy keeps reaching for another chips, he claims, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Hearing the irresistible crunch, the bus driver grabs “Just one.”Of course, he keeps munching until finally his hat is full of those habit-forming chips. By the end of the ad, everyone on the bus is chomping and singing “No one can eat just one.” That’s amazing when you consider that you can’t even get two people to speak to each other on the buses I ride!
But the advertisers are experts on human motivation. They want to create in us an appetite for more. Even without those commercials, we are driven by that appetite.
“More is usually perceived as the answer to our restlessness, the “if only I had” of life. We convince ourselves that there’s nothing wrong with us that would’t be cured by more time, more house, more money, more friends, more job, more clothes, more excitement, more comforts.
Then we get the “two aspirin” form of a big raise, a dream house, a partner, a lighter schedule or a standing ovation – only to find that the “headache” of restlessness soon returns.
The unsettling truth is that more is never enough!
Discontentment destroys any possibility of personal peace. It condemns us to the pressure cooker of guaranteed restlessness.
Conventional wisdom tell us “A man’s reach should always exceed his grasp.” A commitment to excellence, to service, to personal purity should keep us reaching. We are by nature, pursuers. But modern stress results from the wrong pursuits – misplaced discontentment.
We are enslaved by expectations that cannot be satisfied. They are intrinsically frustrating. These “drivers” comes in three forms, and they keep us on the edge because they keep us reaching for more.
Possession
People
Performance
Possession
Plato commented on our possession expectations:
Poverty consists not in the decrease of one’s possession but in the increase of one’s greed
There is always another “thing” you do not have.
And the increase of things only creates an appetite for more.
There was a time we looked forward to owning one TV, but then we needed two. Once we are thrilled with a flat of our own, but the thrill soon replaced with a hankering for a landed property. Eventually the landed property was too little. It would take a big house to do the trick. And a swimming pool would be nice too.
Our “poverty” really is in Plato’s words “the increase of one’s greed.” Dinner out was once-special treat – now it’s routine. Tonight it will take a fancy restaurant to provide the same special treat. It seems only yesterday that an air conditioner was the luxury of the rich – today I have got to have one. Yesterday’s luxury become today’s necessity.
Possession expectations will keep pushing us past the fragile limits of peace.
People
We live in a state of chronic frustration because the significant others in our lives do not measure up. Or can’t measure up.
While the baby is on the way, we profess only want a child who is normal. But from birth on, we ant a super kid! We want him either the life we did not have or a replay of the life we did have. Somehow, their grades, their friends, their style are never good enough.
We focus on what they need to improve, seldom on what they have achieved.
Marriages become battlefields because our partners continually disappoint us.
Weaknesses are magnified, strengths are forgotten – just the reverse of the courtship process. We’re expecting more of Prince Charming or Cinderella and they may be getting tired of never being enough.
If you are not satisfied with those around you, you are probably even less satisfied with yourself. We compare ourselves to standards of parenting, partnering or producing that are unrealistic and can never relax because we are never good enough.
Performance
Performance drives us to stressful schedule, sacrifices and compromises. Our worth becomes identified with our work and no spot on the mountain is enough. Even the top is unsatisfying as Alexandra the Great discovered when he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer.
Whatever our game is, we will lose consistently if we have to win all the time. We aspire to be promoted to the next rung of the company ladder –only to need yet the next promotion before the paint is dry on our new office door. No award, no achievement is ever enough. We punish our bodies, our families, our friends, and our sanity to reach for another level of victory.
One day this unquenchable appetite for conquest can even violate the marriage covenant. There is a “need” to demonstrate that you are still attractive. An innocent flirtations are tantalizing YOU, your spouse, your kids – and even your conquest – end up sacrificed on the ugly altar of adultery.
It is stress-driven slavery to always have something to prove. Discontentment runs like a treadmill under our feet. We are always running, pushing for more possession, more from people, more conquest. There is no rest on a treadmill !
ARE your lifestyles on a treadmill!
One class potato chip commercial shows a boy boarding a bus with a big bag of their crunchies. As the boy keeps reaching for another chips, he claims, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” Hearing the irresistible crunch, the bus driver grabs “Just one.”Of course, he keeps munching until finally his hat is full of those habit-forming chips. By the end of the ad, everyone on the bus is chomping and singing “No one can eat just one.” That’s amazing when you consider that you can’t even get two people to speak to each other on the buses I ride!
But the advertisers are experts on human motivation. They want to create in us an appetite for more. Even without those commercials, we are driven by that appetite.
“More is usually perceived as the answer to our restlessness, the “if only I had” of life. We convince ourselves that there’s nothing wrong with us that would’t be cured by more time, more house, more money, more friends, more job, more clothes, more excitement, more comforts.
Then we get the “two aspirin” form of a big raise, a dream house, a partner, a lighter schedule or a standing ovation – only to find that the “headache” of restlessness soon returns.
The unsettling truth is that more is never enough!
Discontentment destroys any possibility of personal peace. It condemns us to the pressure cooker of guaranteed restlessness.
Conventional wisdom tell us “A man’s reach should always exceed his grasp.” A commitment to excellence, to service, to personal purity should keep us reaching. We are by nature, pursuers. But modern stress results from the wrong pursuits – misplaced discontentment.
We are enslaved by expectations that cannot be satisfied. They are intrinsically frustrating. These “drivers” comes in three forms, and they keep us on the edge because they keep us reaching for more.
Possession
People
Performance
Possession
Plato commented on our possession expectations:
Poverty consists not in the decrease of one’s possession but in the increase of one’s greed
There is always another “thing” you do not have.
And the increase of things only creates an appetite for more.
There was a time we looked forward to owning one TV, but then we needed two. Once we are thrilled with a flat of our own, but the thrill soon replaced with a hankering for a landed property. Eventually the landed property was too little. It would take a big house to do the trick. And a swimming pool would be nice too.
Our “poverty” really is in Plato’s words “the increase of one’s greed.” Dinner out was once-special treat – now it’s routine. Tonight it will take a fancy restaurant to provide the same special treat. It seems only yesterday that an air conditioner was the luxury of the rich – today I have got to have one. Yesterday’s luxury become today’s necessity.
Possession expectations will keep pushing us past the fragile limits of peace.
People
We live in a state of chronic frustration because the significant others in our lives do not measure up. Or can’t measure up.
While the baby is on the way, we profess only want a child who is normal. But from birth on, we ant a super kid! We want him either the life we did not have or a replay of the life we did have. Somehow, their grades, their friends, their style are never good enough.
We focus on what they need to improve, seldom on what they have achieved.
Marriages become battlefields because our partners continually disappoint us.
Weaknesses are magnified, strengths are forgotten – just the reverse of the courtship process. We’re expecting more of Prince Charming or Cinderella and they may be getting tired of never being enough.
If you are not satisfied with those around you, you are probably even less satisfied with yourself. We compare ourselves to standards of parenting, partnering or producing that are unrealistic and can never relax because we are never good enough.
Performance
Performance drives us to stressful schedule, sacrifices and compromises. Our worth becomes identified with our work and no spot on the mountain is enough. Even the top is unsatisfying as Alexandra the Great discovered when he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer.
Whatever our game is, we will lose consistently if we have to win all the time. We aspire to be promoted to the next rung of the company ladder –only to need yet the next promotion before the paint is dry on our new office door. No award, no achievement is ever enough. We punish our bodies, our families, our friends, and our sanity to reach for another level of victory.
One day this unquenchable appetite for conquest can even violate the marriage covenant. There is a “need” to demonstrate that you are still attractive. An innocent flirtations are tantalizing YOU, your spouse, your kids – and even your conquest – end up sacrificed on the ugly altar of adultery.
It is stress-driven slavery to always have something to prove. Discontentment runs like a treadmill under our feet. We are always running, pushing for more possession, more from people, more conquest. There is no rest on a treadmill !
ARE your lifestyles on a treadmill!
.JPG)
