The Dissatisfaction Problem
No one is immune. And the pandemic has laid our dissatisfactions with our jobs, our relationships, and ourselves bare. The result is a great reckoning. Maybe we should welcome it.
Satisfaction is a key component of happiness, something that seems to be sorely lacking in the pandemic era. For twosday1 we offer a pair of long reads that examine what is going on with all of us in this era of job shuffling and “anti-ambition.”
The pandemic divided workers in to “essential” and “non-essential.” The former began to feel like “essential” was a polite way of saying “expendable.” And the latter began to feel that this time-consuming, life-defining thing had maybe just been busy work all along.
“The act of working has been stripped bare. You don’t have little outfits to put on, and lunches to go to, and coffee breaks to linger over and clients to schmooze. The office is where it shouldn’t be...and all that’s left now is the job itself, naked and alone. And a lot of people don’t like what they see.”
Perhaps the pandemic has more of us recognizing and stepping off the hedonic treadmill. At least occasionally.
“As we grow older in the West, we generally think we should have a lot to show for our lives—a lot of trophies. According to numerous Eastern philosophies, this is backwards. As we age, we shouldn’t accumulate more to represent ourselves, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, to find happiness and peace.”