I was at a wedding last weekend - not mine, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here. Another year, another perfectly lit venue with candles that cost a month’s rent. Somewhere between the entrance and the first dance I realized the wedding wasn’t really for the happy couple. It was a stage. The dress was doing a job, the car parked outside was doing a job, even people’s faces were doing a job, mine included - that face expression that says look how well things are going for me to neighbours and relatives, even for strangers I’ll never see again but apparently still need convincing.
proof that I actually attended the wedding
Before I used to be able to watch this from a comfortable distance, more amused than disturbed, but this time I couldn’t. Being single at a wedding does something ugly to your objectivity, it takes the display and it makes it personal. I wasn’t just observing the opulence, but doing the math of it: the perfect dress, the perfect first dance, the perfect husband that exists but I haven’t met yet. I sat at the table completely forgetting of all the things I have at this age and contemplating on the relationship, the money and the car in the parking lot and none of it was rational but all of it was real.
It’s not just the people in the room. It’s not just the wedding. Social media can make the guest list infinite, right? You post something for the cousin of someone you see at the wedding, you’re thinking of a stranger on a yacht in the Maldives, someone whose name probably you don’t even know. Same performance, same audience logic, but scaled to everyone with a phone and internet connection.
So it got me thinking. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why is contentment always suspicious like leaving the stove on when you go out?
Psychologists have an accurate term for this: scarcity. We tend to assign more value to things the moment they seem limited or hard to get, not necessarily because they become more useful but because our brains associate hard to get as a shortcut for it must be good. It is the same wiring that makes limited stock make you want that ugly dress you didn’t want 30 minutes ago.
But scarcity alone doesn’t explain why we chase things like that and why it doesn’t really make us happy after we get it. Neuroscientists who study reward have found that wanting and liking run on two separate systems in our brains.
The wanting system is the one that makes you crave, refresh the page and check the product again. The liking system is what actually enjoys the thing once you have it. These two systems aren’t always in agreement. This is why you can desperately want something and after you get it you feel absolutely nothing. It is not a personal failing, it is how we are built.
And then there is the system that actually runs the whole operations which is less about chemistry and more about the fact that wanting was really never about the object. Pierre Bourdieu, a french sociologist, argues in Distinction that taste, what we want and what we find beautiful isn’t personal at all. It is rather positional. We are not chasing objects but we are chasing a place in a hierarchy and the object is just the scoreboard. The yacht isn’t about the yatch, it’s about a stanger somewhere having proof of a rank you don’t currently hold. Which means the moment you get the wedding, the yacth, or whatever is you’re chasing, the game doesn’t really end. It just quitely finds you a table where you are seated below.
I know the easy answer is to stop comparing because God knows I have tried many times. Sometimes it works but you cannot logic your way out of a system that isn’t running on logic. Your preferences in terms of the music you like, what food feels elevated, your hobbies and habits it is rather social conditioning. Desire and taste are viewed as instruments for social positioning, and they reproduce across an entire society, often shifting only in the moment something becomes accessible to more people.
So maybe being content with your life but not that content isn’t a flaw to fix.
Maybe it’s the tax we pay because we are social animals with functioning brain and maybe we should just accept it. I am not saying everyone is feeling this, obviously, this is also why we go to therapy: the accept our past, the understand our present and to feel more optimistic about the future.
Thank you for reading,
A
I am close to reaching 30 and I am writing about life and all its meaning through my eyes and my experiences. This is a vulnerable and intimate place for me and I hope it can get you to open up more. I write about grief, relationships, career, money and all in between. I hope you choose to stay. Thank you for being here. If it’s your first interaction with me and my articles, have a seat, we’re open.