To Satisfy- A Wasted Effort

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and the rest of Rolling Stones flashed all of a sudden on my mind. Now, I find myself humming to the tune of the 1965 hit (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

I can’t get no satisfaction cause I try and I try and I try
I can’t get no…I can’t get no.
I can’t get no satisfaction, hey, hey, hey

Enough now for being nostalgic about British rock…let me avoid the possibility of telling you more. If I do so it might actually lead to The Clash, The Jam, Bryan Ferry then to the latter- Oasis, The Libertines, Blur,etc.

The song actually rushed out of nothing in my head. The moment I finished eating dinner and got into my room, I played the song instantly and it intensified the way I feel towards the idea of satisfaction. I have to go on thinking because of a song. Songs sometimes are powerful instruments in getting a lazy mind and body to function; this would actually depend on the lyrics!

It just so occurred to me that in search for happiness, it is well a wasted effort. You try to keep yourself content when all that happens to you when you get what you desire, you just want more. Keeping yourself satisfied echoes Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Recurrence. I let myself to go through a cycle over and over again. I have now decided to stop thinking that there really is satisfaction that is permanent. There is temporary satisfaction though. Though everything is time bound hence in the future, that sense of satisfaction you are experiencing at the moment may not be so tomorrow. Citing an example of mine which started with a desire to own a pair of decent shoes and when you say decent; something presentable and luxe. I still remember vividly how it felt like to desire for something which you think is the amalgam of all my material wants. Okay, it was a pair of lace ups from my sole-mate Prada. I picked up the pair from the display and I instantly fell in love with it. It was love at first sight as one might say. I said to myself that regardless of the price, I am determined to get it for it is beautiful, functional, and the kind of shoe that would still look the same ten years from now. The inevitable purchase was made and now that I have it, I realized I don’t want to just own lace-ups. It came to me that I also wanted an ankle boot, a moccasin, a driving shoe, a sneaker, and a brogue. Moving beyond my example what I find true to human nature is that there is that never ending quest for things. I know you may be thinking that my example is somewhat shallow but that situation illustrates right through what I am trying to project here. Based on my concept, I share with you a more personal account. I am now a communication arts student in De La Salle University because I want to go to a university even though I really wanted to take up Design or an art course. For now, the magnum of my ambitions is to be able to study in a reputable art school in Paris, London, or Milan. Let us assume that I was able to achieve that and when I get it, I would want something else that would top that. To claim that one can be satisfied is absurd as achieving something doesn’t define us just like that and give us a sense of completeness. Unless we die then there is a complete end to our search for meaning or something else in our lives. Death is just one thing that concludes all our efforts but as we live it will be a recurring process that we go through the cycle exhaustively. The reason why this cycle becomes burdensome is that one often associates an achievement with satisfaction which only later on, one realizes is to be neglected after some time then a new aspiration occurs. Now, I do not wish to satisfy myself any further for we are all bound to live Sissyphus’ fate, we would go through this process over and over again. As I am writing this blog, I do feel that I have shared my thoughts clearly but probably after a few hours I would want to write something better than this. As I realize that I want something else this is the equivalent of Sissyphus pushing the rock downward and when I decide to write a new entry that is when I go to step 1 which is at the bottom of the mountain. The forcing out of ideas and the actual process of doing this new write-up would be parallel to the ascent up the mountain.