Is Discontent a Privilege?

A friend of mine shared something with me when we were enjoying lunch the other day.

Discontent is a privilege.

I’ve been chewing on this statement ever since.

Her analogy was this: When you are young and find a place to live, like a cheap house or an apartment, you are happy because its yours. You like the wonky walls and the slightly fringe hipster vibe of the neighborhood. Besides, it’s what you can afford at this point in your life.

But maybe you get a better paying job, or you manage to save a bunch of money, suddenly, you may become aware that you could have something else. Maybe even something better.

Which can lead to discontent.

Happiness drains out of the things you already have because you see the possibility of having something else. The wonky walls begin to look crooked, and the neighborhood is no longer cool. Everything that was good about your existence gets picked apart by the newfound discontent. If you are unhappy enough, you might even move.

You have the means to do so, after all. You are privileged enough to be in a position of discontent.

Fair enough. But what if the opposite is true?

If there is no increase in salary, no additional funds, no option to consider a different place, then there are also far fewer alternatives to consider. Certainly, this can also breed discontent. Ask me how I know.

So, I continued to ponder what she meant by this.

Though humans have always faced discontent, I think in the modern western context, we may feel it rather acutely. For example, it’s almost impossible to miss the constant drumbeat of consumerism in the background music of our lives. This touches people from every walk of life, whether they have means or not. Advertisements plaster over every bit of our collective attention span with the sole purpose of driving discontent.

In that context, I don’t think discontent is a privilege. It’s a symptom of a system built on the need for unbridled growth. I think that it’s a symptom of the, let’s just be honest here, psychological warfare that is modern marketing.

But as I drilled down further, I think the root of discontent, the target that all advertisements are aiming for, is a fundamental resistance to reality.

Wait, what?!

Discontent comes from actively resisting reality. It comes from pushing back against what is. It comes from looking at what is happening, what you have, who your partner is, etc. and saying: “I don’t accept this as my reality.”

Resistance allows us, for a short time, to look outside of ourselves for a solution. It allows us to be in denial. It allows us to avoid looking inside ourselves to find the reason we are uncomfortable. While two people might have very different access to resources, the underlying driver is the same.

This means that resistance and resulting discontent look different in different scenarios. If you, as my friend says, add significant resources to this equation, you end up with Jeff Bezos sipping Mai Tais on his mega yacht and still angling for more. If you have no resources to add to the equation, or worse, you lack enough functional resources for living, you might fall prey to predatory lending practices.

With discontent, the first piece to recognize is: what part of your reality are you resisting? Then, once you figure that out, the next step is to accept that it is, in fact, your reality. And the third step, which is arguably, the most difficult of all, is to find ways to love your reality, to have gratitude for your reality, in spite of how difficult it is.

But c’mon, what if your reality is less than ideal? What if it’s downright shitty?

Well, first you have to acknowledge the truth of the situation. You have to own it and feel the feelings associated with owning it. Which is uncomfortable to say the least.

But after that…after that there is a choice: create change from the state of gratitude in spite of reality or revert to discontent. The former positions a person for internal transformation… then external change will naturally follow. The latter attempts fundamental change at the external level. Realistically, there is no end to what can be added from the outside… never truly curing discontent, but amusing it for a while.

It goes without saying that gratitude isn’t easy during difficult times. But neither is discontent when times are good or bad. I guess it comes down to choosing which difficult thing makes the most sense to do.

If times are bad, maybe gratitude isn’t the most obvious choice. But if you know you can have gratitude for a less than desirable reality, then you will likely be content long before reaching billionaire mega yacht status. Plus, you will create something new through the lens of contentment vs discontentment…and its worth saying that things are likely to turn out quite different.

Happiness, after all, derives some of its brilliance from the power of contentment. From gratitude and love. From connection. Resistance and the discontent it produces, mutes the light of happiness at every level. It chains us to a life of spending our energy looking for cure outside of ourselves. How free is that?

Discontent is a privilege? Maybe it is. Maybe it is an entitled way to use our limited human energy while we grace the planet with our presence. Maybe we all have the same amount of life force capital to do with what we please, and discontent is a surefire method to wantonly fritter it away. Discontent keeps us stuck in a loop, avoiding personal growth that could truly make life better-for us and everyone else.

So maybe it is a privilege. No matter what your bank account looks like.