Finding Contentment in a Restless Culture

Life choices can seem like a maze without an exit
CC Jean Stimmell: Lands End, SF: 12/28/16

Why are so many privileged, high-achieving students  giving up: Rather than being motivated by having so many choices, they become exhausted by the countless decisions they will have to soldier through to get there. A recent book, Why we are Restless, seeks to shed light on this state of affairs. 

It certainly spoke to me.

I guess I am a canary in the coal mine because that’s how I felt over fifty years ago, striving for excellence in order to get to the promised land – but sadly, a place I couldn’t define. I remember at St Paul’s during their summer session envying the groundskeepers outside for their stress-free, uncomplicated lifestyle. Stopping for lunch in Boston as my parents drove me to Columbia to start college, I envied the dock workers outside the restaurant unloading fish.

I felt a flash of recognition in this quote by a hypothetical student from the book: “It’s as though a life that rejects striving altogether is the only alternative she can imagine to a life of striving without purpose.” That was me! Without a mentor to guide me, I choose to reject striving by dropping out of Columbia in my third semester to do on-the-job training on the rivers of Vietnam.

After the military and finishing college at UNH, I found a mentor of sorts in author and longshoreman Eric Hoffer. To an extent, I emulated his lifestyle, building dry-laid stonewalls while haphazardly writing columns for the Monitor along with infrequent freelance pieces elsewhere.

Lifting rocks all day can be exhausting – so can sending out query letters that routinely get rejected. I compensated by scratching another itch working for peace and social justice on the side. Finally, health issues forced me to change professions. I decided to attend graduate school at Antioch to become a counselor which would enlarge my ability to help others, along with the added benefit of finally getting a decent paycheck and good health insurance.

It also made my life easier in the short run by squashing my desire to write because of what might seem like an exaggerated fear that I might write something about a patient. But that fear is well-grounded. The patient/therapist relationship, which is sacred to me, is built upon trust.

Now that I am retired, I finally have the means and space to write. In addition, I’m gaining insight into my prior life choices, thanks to the book I’ve already mentioned, Why We Are Restless by Benjamin Storey and Jenna Storey. The authors believe that contentment is not to be found in self-help books. Instead, the root problem is in what we are trying to achieve.^⁠1

To find the answer, they write, we must return to premodern times. The American national character has long had a peculiar trait as Alexis de Tocqueville discovered when he toured American in 1831, “the most free and most enlightened men placed in the happiest condition in the world” were not content with what they had—that they were “restless in the midst of their well-being.”^⁠2

While our educational system has long excelled at helping students take the next step, it does not give them adequate assistance to understand the nature of the choices they make and the final ends toward which they lead. “Those who discover that they have such final ends, and learn to assess them, see their way to the exit from the fun house of arbitrary decisions in which the young so often find themselves trapped.”^⁠3

I agree with the authors that the number of final ends is not large. Aquinas usefully suggests that the ultimate objects of human longing can be sorted into eight enduring categories.^⁠4 If we want to know where we are headed, we should ask ourselves these questions:

“Am I interested in this opportunity because it leads to wealth? Or am I aiming at praise and admiration? Do I want enduring glory? Or power — to “make an impact”? Is my goal to maximize my pleasures? Do I seek health? Do I seek some “good of the soul,” such as knowledge or virtue? Or is my ultimate longing to come face-to-face with the divine?”^⁠5

I suspect that my fellow Monitor readers who consult this list – particularly those of a certain age – might also have an “aha” moment: an instant recognition that some of these categories speak directly to what we find most important in life– and now regret not being enlightened about when we were young and could do something about it.

xxx

¹ Storey, Benjamin; Storey, Jenna Silber. Why We Are Restless (New Forum Books) . Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

² Ibid. (p. xi).

³ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/opinion/college-students-happiness-liberal-arts.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20220816&instance_id=69415&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=30753738&segment_id=101495&user_id=273ae8c1ede4fde7d59a2b0627accb92

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.