The column “Everything will be fine” is about incessant desire: the desire for unfulfilled desires

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In fact, every child knows that open desires often seem more important than fulfilled ones. That the fireflies made from fruit gum, which people stomped and shouted so loudly at the checkout, don’t bring much satisfaction. Once the wish is fulfilled, it expires. Or leads to stomach pain. Being a materially oriented pragmatist, the child nevertheless makes a number of demands that can be satisfied; he does not want to be disappointed. And this will happen in any case.

Numerous studies are now being conducted that can help the child in each of us clarify the difference between “wanting” and “liking,” between “desire” and “happiness.” Researchers from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, for example, showed that heavy coffee drinkers (three cups or more per day) have a significantly greater need for coffee than light drinkers, but enjoy the drink significantly less than they do. The realization that “wanting” and “liking” are at odds can be transferred to alcohol or other drugs: you want this substance more and more, want it more and more, and at the same time you like it less and less .

Neuroscience also confirms that satisfied desire does not necessarily cause pleasure: dopamine, the so-called happiness hormone (perhaps more accurately called the desire hormone), this system is huge, stable and easy to trigger. And the system of joy is small and fragile. (Which would make sense even from an evolutionary point of view: fun is the bait, the side dish. The main thing is reproduction, the main thing is that the species survives.)

Maybe you know it too, those docile states of exhaustion in which you never stop hoping for a paradise you know isn’t there: watching endless Instagram movies (want), feeling bad about it (like) ), still (want) to continue.

What can you take from it for everyday life? It may be like this: Of course, we should not suppress our desires, our passions and, therefore, our cheerfulness. (At best, some Stoics advise this.) But how about we always sit back and ask which desires, if fulfilled, actually make us happier? Do we want what we like? Another hour of screen time? SUV? Fifth beer? Tenth flight to the USA? The twentieth thing? Thirtieth rise? Really now? Everything will be fine.

Ursula von Arx knows that Teresa of Avila already knew that more tears are shed for answered prayers than for unanswered ones. Von Arx writes in Blick every other Monday.

Source: Blick