Getting to enough
“If an experience or a purchase is truly fulfilling, the desire disappears for a long time. You are satisfied, contented, at peace.”
-Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin in Your Money or Your Life
Ever have something really resonate with you? That quote did for me. It finally explained two things for me: why I love my 16 year old car, and why the more I eat out, the more I want to eat out.
One is satisfying; the other isn’t.
I’m completely satisfied with my car. It’s reliable, economical, nice looking, and exactly what I want in a car. If someone were to offer me some sort of fabulous Italian sports car for free, I might take it for a day or so and rent a racetrack so that I could drive it fast, but I wouldn’t want to keep it. It wouldn’t really be free: there’d be taxes, insurance, maintenance & frequent tire replacements, high speed driver training, race track rentals, gas, worry about someone stealing it, etc. It would probably be a LOT of fun for a few hours, but it wouldn’t really be satisfying otherwise because of the additional factors involved. I’d be more likely to sell it and invest the money. And if I could only ever have either my car or the Italian sports car, it’d be my car that I would pick, because it’s completely satisfying for me.
As far as eating out goes, for me it’s the opposite of satisfying: it’s addicting. The more I do it, the more I want to do it, and it’s never enough. It also tends to be bad for me physically, and hard on my wallet. SOME parts of eating out are satisfying for me: such as when I eat out with my husband and we sit and talk for an hour or two. I love that. The food is a nice accompaniment to the time spent with my husband. And sometimes I enjoy eating out alone, or getting takeout and eating by myself. When that happens it’s because I really focus on the food, on the flavor of every bite, as I eat unhurriedly and sit and relax. But a lot of the time I’m eating out due to habit, or out of addiction. I go there thinking that I shouldn’t be doing this, that I don’t really want it, but I’m craving it and I go anyway. What I really need to think about is WHAT exactly it is that I’m trying to fulfill with eating out; what it is that I’m dissatisfied with, or what would really be satisfying instead.
