Why You Need to be More Disappointed with Life
Let’s daydream a bit. Don’t worry, calm your guilty productivity obsessed conscience; this will undoubtedly prove to be valuable.
Let’s imagine you had buckets of money and so much time that you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted.
Daydream a little bit more. Imagine that you had a gorgeous, intelligent, kind significant other and close, loving, hilarious group of friends and family.
Basically, let’s imagine that your life was so goddamn charmed that you didn’t even have a need for cliche-listicle-self-help articles because you were living out all your wildest, most inconceivable dreams.
Now imagine you had a button — an instant gratification button — that could give you all that and more.
Would you press it?
It’s a simple answer right?
You’re thinking: Of course I would press it.
We have instant gratification for everything else. Wanna get some food? Order Ubereats. Wanna watch some quality television? Watch Netflix. Wanna know what rejection feels like? Use Tinder (…or is that just me?).
Imagine instant gratification for our careers.
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
Let’s be honest, it’s hard for ambitious people like you and me.
There are moments where you are hopelessly stuck, with no way of achieving any of your dreams.
I face those moments all the time because my main dream in life is to be a great storyteller. I wanna tell stories so compelling that you have to tell everybody you know about them.
This is a dumb, impossible task for the reason all creative endeavors are.
When I have an idea for a short film or a video essay or a blog post, I have this magnificent feeling that warms me up inside. This is it. I’ve done it. This is going to be the thing that resonates with people. It’s going to go viral because it will impact and change people.
But, something is lost in the translation. The thing I make doesn’t capture the poignancy and the depth of the feeling. That magical idea is gone. Instead, I’m left with something painfully unremarkable.
These moments happen to everyone. Think about a time where you were trying to tell your friends a funny story. You think it’s hilarious and you are laughing while you are telling it, but after it’s said and done your friends just give you quizzical looks. Or if your friends are anything like my friends, they proceed to roast you incessantly.
What was lost in the translation?
Recently I thought I had given a great speech for my speech competition. Instead, I didn’t win for what felt like the millionth time. I plastered that familiar fake smile on my face hoping nobody would see through its absurdity.
Half hour later, I sat in my car shoveling Carl’s Jr. curly fries and a chocolate Oreo milkshake in my mouth. I listened to sad Coldplay songs (are there any other type of Coldplay songs?) full blast wondering why I try.
Over the years I have been told I wasn’t good enough, been stuck in never-ending creative ruts, and been disappointed time and time again. Then I try to pick myself up, dust myself off, and tell myself it’ll happen for me next time. But, the next time never comes.
At one point, after a particularly tough disappointment, I called my parents asking them for advice.
Over the course of my conversation my mom told me something I still think about. She said, “Creating stories to help others achieve their dreams is noble, but ultimately it’s going to end in disappointment.”
She’s right. Because even if you can get some of the magic translated correctly, why should anyone listen to you? There is so much noise out there, so many good stories, so many self-proclaimed self-help gurus. Why would anyone listen to you?
What’s the point? Every time I try to create magic, I get stuck and disappointed instead. I will feel terrible and I wouldn’t be making anything good and nobody will be listening to me. There is no point.
I got mired in this melancholy mood for a long time and for a while, I quit trying to make things. I was going to use my time in a “better” way and for three or four years I did that. I tried to abandon it all for a stable, traditional, and unambitious life.
And yet every time I would watch plays or read books or watch movies, a part of me couldn’t enjoy it. I was envious. It should be me.
I would come up with all these ideas of how they could tell the story better. I would read cliche self help articles thinking that my voice could uncliche the genre a bit. I would wish I was there helping fellow creators to make the world a better place.
But I couldn’t fathom returning. That was admitting — I was a sadist. I wasn’t going to be miserable for some gratification that was never going to come.
But something changed.
The impetus was a film by Christopher Nolan.
It made me rethink my disappointment. It compelled me to write this Medium article.
It’s about two magicians who have a professional rivalry that borders on obsession. In many ways the film is a thinly veiled analysis of the creative process. Towards the end of the movie, Hugh Jackman has a speech that made me re-examine why I create.
“The audience knows the truth — that the world is simple. Miserable. Solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, you could make them wonder.”
I thought about the stories I loved. They made me laugh, cry, and feel like everything was going to be okay.
But, more importantly they almost imperceptibly changed the world around me. They changed me by changing how I see. They unlocked something in me I didn’t even know was locked allowing me to see wonder, magic, and beauty.
That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m not trying to tell stories that are good. No, I am trying to do so much more. That’s why I struggle so much and am stuck and am continually disappointed.
What I’m chasing is elusive. I’m trying to create the impossible.
I’m trying to make magic.
One of my other idols (other than Nolan) has a saying I love.
In the past, I was disappointed because I knew that what I was creating wasn’t magic. Or I created something that had a little bit of magic, but nobody recognized it. This is what made me miserable. I wanted an instant gratification button so everything I made would instantly be amazing.
But through The Prestige and through Kanye, I began to understand that’s not important. The fascinating part is turning something into magic.
I realized why a magician never reveals his secret. It’s because the trick part of a magic trick is trite. After a magician reveals his secret, a person will say, “yeah okay of course that’s super easy” or “I suspected that anyway”. It’s impossible to feel magic when you already know the trick, right? Because magic is magic when nobody believes it is possible.
Real magicians realize the trick itself isn’t important, it’s the process of finding the trick that is important. It’s the process of going from something mundane and miserable, something of this world, to something different. To something that is magic, that makes people wonder, something life affirming.
That kind of alchemy is hard. But, it makes me understand what I’m trying to achieve. Each disappointment in my past is a necessary evil. They are all experiments. They teach me how to get better at alchemy, how to calibrate my mind to turn the ordinary into magic.
This inevitably means lots of time reflecting, being stuck, and being disappointed.
In our instant gratification world, this is something you have to teach yourself. Everything in life is so easy. We can find little bits of happiness easily by watching TV on Netflix, laughing at memes on Insta or getting notifications from Facebook. We are chasing happiness, but we should be chasing meaning.
We should be chasing disappointment.
I tried quitting creative stuff because I wanted to live a life without disappointment. Paradoxically, I found this made me less happy. Disappointment only comes from risking a part of your soul. That’s why we feel terrible when we fall short, but it’s also why we should keep doing it.
All these thoughts led me to reexamine my feelings about that instant gratification button. Would I still press it if I had the chance?
I watched a TV show recently which was about this exact subject. It’s about a superhero who could destroy any bad guy with just one punch. He’s called One Punch Man.
Unlike other superheroes there is no conflict for One Punch Man. He has unlimited power. He doesn’t have to try, even against the most powerful bad guys. He just defeats them with one punch.
You would think this kinda power would leave him happy and satisfied. But actually, he is bored and depressed. Everything in his life is easy. He doesn’t have to try. He craves a more challenging life with more meaning.
We gain happiness through transformation, disappointment, and struggle. If everything was super easy (if all our obstacles in life could be punched away instantly), life would not have any meaning.
Life is hard, miserable, and solid all the way through. That’s why it’s so much better to create magic, to make people wonder. Life’s difficulty is life’s greatest source of happiness.
If I dig deeper into all those people I envied for winning the career lottery, their lives never turn out how I would want mine to turn out. Many people who get a huge break without the necessary hard work quickly get trapped by depression, boredom, and addictions.
It makes me rethink that instant gratification button. Would I press it? I’m not so sure anymore.
What do you think?
Would you press it?
It’s a simple answer right?
Maybe not. Maybe, not. Maybe the answer isn’t so simple.
