Ever longed for a
material good – be it a shiny sports car, luxurious watch, or posh pair of jeans
– only to lose virtually all interest in it once the product is in your
possession? Have you rejected the advances
of a potential suitor – one who literally worships the floor you walk on – in
hopes of attracting someone who has no romantic feelings toward you? Even after
landing a seemingly perfect job, have you
found yourself looking for “the next best opportunity” just a year or
two later?
There’s no question we’ve all been there. But
what many people fail to realize is that the journey tends to bring us greater
satisfaction than the actual destination. The struggle to obtain our object of
desire – that sense of being on the edge of our seat – seems to provide a
higher level of excitement than the recognition that we have that object in our grasp.
For example, most people (myself included)
spend the work week yearning for the weekend to get here. Over the course of
the week you’ll hear me uttering such things to coworkers as “I wish it were
Friday” or “I can’t wait for the weekend.” Once Saturday night
arrives, instead of making the most of what little time is left before the
start of a new work week, I become mentally preoccupied with the fact that
Monday is knocking on my doorstep. “Here we go again… another string of days in
which I’ll have to wake up at the crack of dawn and contend with annoying
co-workers and impossible deadlines,” I muse. I find myself wishing that it
were further into the week – closer to Friday – and craving that rush of excitement
we all experience in the days leading up to the weekend. Yet, once it’s Sunday, that feeling is tempered by the reality that we all have to go
back to work the next day. This is a prime example of wanting what you can’t
have: We seem to derive more pleasure from the very anticipation that builds up
as we draw closer to the weekend than we do from experiencing the weekend
itself.
Let me give you a few other
examples. Would you value and look forward to visiting a particular destination
more – say, London – if you got the chance to do it once a month, or once a
year? While visiting London every month might seem like a dream come true,
you’ll eventually tire of the routine. The same is true of a delicious meal you
might eat only occasionally instead of every week. Doesn’t a burger or slice of
pizza seem much more delectable when you haven’t eaten one in a long time? Then we have those hard-to-resist material
possessions. After longing for a designer watch for years, your spouse finally
buys you one. A week or two later, the novelty wears off and you set your
sights on a new target – a gold necklace you caught a glimpse of in a recent Kay Jewelers commercial.
We’ve all heard the oft-repeated
saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder.” Once again, this is another case
of wanting what you can’t have. Haven’t you noticed how we tend to miss people
more the longer we go without seeing them? Perhaps there was a time you went
several months without speaking to a close friend or relative and were overcome
with joy upon spotting that individual at the local grocery store. Yet, those
feelings aren’t necessarily present when you have the opportunity to see a
person more frequently – hence the reason why arguments between roommates and
spouses are so commonplace.
Indeed, the converse to the saying mentioned above is
that “familiarity breeds contempt.”At some point or another, we’ve
vied for the affections of someone who has expressed little to no interest in
us. We’ve also been on the other side of the fence, where we’ve spurned
someone’s romantic advances – and no matter how many cutesy gifts and warm
compliments are foisted on us, our feelings remained unchanged. The “wanting
what we can’t have” effect becomes magnified if other factors make the object
of our desire even more difficult to obtain (e.g. the person is already married
or just wants to be friends, our parents or friends disapprove because of an
age gap, etc.)
How many women have
admitted to falling for a “bad boy” in their lives? I’ve met a good number of them, and their
stories seem to share a common thread: The guy was not as interested in the
girl as she was in him, the girl wanted to rebel against the well-meaning wishes of a friend or family member, and she thought she could “fix” the guy.
In each case, the relationship ultimately failed; once the girl landed her bad
boy, she was forced to deal with all his issues, rendering the excitement of
the chase nothing but a distant memory.
Wanting what we can’t have also
seeps into the world of marketing and consumer psychology. Have you noticed that
a sale becomes even more irresistible to us when we see signs plastered with
the words “for a limited time only,” “time is running out,” or “sale ends today”?
The reason for this is simple. We attach
more value to things if they’re unavailable or hard to get. We also see as more
valuable those things that require a bigger investment, whether of the
physical, emotional, or financial variety. That’s why so many of us become
laser-focused on buying more and more expensive products, and, as noted
earlier, winning the heart of the person we’ve been pining for.
This dynamic also plays out in
job world – something often termed “grass is greener syndrome.” Though
we may be comfortable with our jobs, sooner or later we hunger for change. We
might desire a bump in salary or better benefits, or find that we desperately
need a change of scenery. When we want out of our present workplace, we
immediately assume that the grass is greener on the other side – that virtually
any other job must be an upgrade over the current one. If that’s the case, why do so many employees leave
their companies, only to regret their decision and return to the same positions
a couple of months later?
Even in this context, things can quickly become
mundane, prompting us to angle for the next best career opportunity that
surfaces. But as is so often the case with a handy new gadget or accessory, the
novelty of a new job wears off and routine can set in easily.
In closing, should we really feel
surprised when the pundits on MSNBC or Fox News say that a president’s second
term in office pales in comparison to the first? President Obama got precisely what he wanted
– another four years in the Oval Office – so what’s his incentive for working
any harder this time around when he knows he cannot run for another term? Last year, it was a different story: he faced
the prospect of not being reelected –
so another four years lay in the balance.
This all seems to point to one clear-cut
conclusion: Human beings appear better at appreciating what they have when (1) they’re
faced with the possibility of losing it (2) they have to work harder to earn
it. What would fulfill you more – receiving $10 million from a stranger on the
street, or earning $10 million on your own toiling away at the office for 25 years? My guess would be the latter.
Maybe that’s why people should not be so quick to profess their love for
someone else; we are all drawn to people and things that we’ve invested in on
some level. As far as relationships go, it would be wise to let the other
person put in some work as well, whether it’s buying you an occasional gift,
taking you out to dinner, and the like. Things that come too easily to us are
often taken for granted – or they lose their appeal rather quickly.
Whether we like it or not,
striving for something better – a better job, a nicer car, a larger home –
keeps us on our toes. We are predisposed to want we don’t have – but that
doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate what we currently possess. I think it’s
important to strike a healthy balance between the desire for “new and improved”
and an appreciation for what we already have. With so many companies coaxing us
to buy stuff we might not need and with Hollywood dictating how we should dress
and act, it’s easy to lose sight of the important things in life.
Want to check out older posts? Here's a convenient link to access them: How to Understand People
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