THAT'S MEN:Our imperfect lives will always frustrate us, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
DISSATISFACTION, LACK, a sense of something missing are all part of the deal that comes with being alive.
So says Buddhist psychology and most of us, I think, would agree. Except the Buddhists would say it’s a waste of energy to try to fill the emptiness since dissatisfaction is inevitable anyway.
Whether we like it or not, though, we are driven to reacting to that dissatisfaction.
Consider Second Life for instance, a virtual world on the internet where people can adopt new appearances (or avatars) and personas, meet other characters, play, fight, have virtual flings and even get virtually married.
I recently watched a BBC programme in the Wonderland series, Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love, and I was struck by the role of dissatisfaction in driving (or, more accurately, beckoning) people into the virtual world.
One woman, Carolyn, a married mother of four in the US who was depressed with her role as a homemaker, found a far more satisfying role as a sexy avatar in Second Life.
She became so obsessed with Second Life, though, that the complete care of the family was left to her husband who also had a full-time job. Her husband seemed a decent sort, if understandably glum about the situation.
On Second Life she met Elliot, an Englishman, and fell for him. They spent as much as nine hours a day – sometimes more – interacting with each other, having fun, fighting, going to virtual restaurants, lying around and having virtual sex. Eventually he broke it off, dissatisfied (there’s that word again) with her dithering about leaving her husband and kids and going to live with him in England.
Missing him terribly, she crossed the Atlantic to visit him in England. They got along well and she was ready to make the momentous move but the fire had gone out for him. She returned to the States where she and her husband are “working” on their relationship.
I wonder if anything in the bricks and mortar world will ever match those heady days and nights in Second Life when she was a sexy, glamorous avatar?
I suppose Carolyn found out that even virtual reality cannot remove dissatisfaction from her life and if she’s to learn to enjoy life with her family she will have to learn to accept the dissatisfaction that goes with it.
That’s an awful lot easier said than done. We live in a culture where marketing is prevalent – and marketing, by promising to fulfil our wants and needs, implies that our current state is one of dissatisfaction. But if dissatisfaction is part of the deal, it can’t be eliminated.
None of which means we have to sit in the dark bemoaning our fate. Efforts to bring about a more satisfying life can and do work. We need to accept, though, that dissatisfaction will always be part of the package and that we will do a lot better to accept that fact than to run away from it, even into Second Life.
Addendum: A lonely death: on the Luas, a rough-looking young man sat beside a woman who was involved, so far as I could gather, in providing a support service for people who were homeless or addicted to drugs. He began to complain about something or other.
Then he changed tack. Had she heard that such and such a person had overdosed in a hostel the previous night? She had not. “He found him,” he said, nodding at a companion who did not react in any way.
The woman did not react in any way either. Did she know the man who had overdosed, he wanted to know? She had not. Was he in a bad way? she asked. “He’s dead,” her informant said. “He found him.” Again a blank stare from the companion. “You’d know him if you saw him.” Then they had reached their stop and were gone. Nobody had said whether the dead man had been decent, or a friend, or a pal, or would be missed.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is free by email.