LXXXV. How to Stop Feeling Miserable

Be human. Do all the unglamorous things human.

Welcome! Today’s post balances this one.

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Wheat Field with Cypresses by Van Gogh

“I hear Socrates saying that the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

There’s a time when eating food feels like a spiritual experience, euphoric—holy, when music strings deep, addictive melodies within us, when slow weekends feel oddly satisfying and sleep feels like dropping into a cozy universe. We notice we don’t require luxury or novelty for life to feel this joyful and beautiful, we just needed a little space in between indulgence. A stretch of fasting before the meal. A bout of silence before Spotify. A few days of missing someone before being in the same room again. Those gaps may not feel like much, but they add weight to the moments that follow.

Now remove the hiatus, and reflect on what happens the other times, when everything is within reach, all the time. We eat before we’re hungry. We check our phones before we’re bored. We take breaks before anything gets hard. There’s always something playing, always a snack nearby, always a glowing screen within reach. The result isn’t satisfaction. It’s a kind of numbness. Things still taste good, look good, sound good—but they don’t register the way they used to. We start wondering if life got dull or if we’re just poor at noticing. It’s why even most couples lose the ‘spark’ and divorce¹.

This is what overstimulation feels like when it creeps in. It shows up as flatness. Our minds get bored, our bodies restless, the hours longer than usual. The pleasurable moments lose their sugar. We lose our ability to feel excited, focused—alive.

Most of us try to fix this by adding more. More movies, more drinks, more Kama Sutra. But they still don’t help. The issue isn’t lack of input or variety. It’s lack of tension. It’s the absence of contrast. We don’t build up. We don’t wait. Pleasure doesn’t get the chance to grow because we never give ourselves room to want it. We never give our spouse the chance to desire us and use their seductive skills to get us as if we were courting them all over again. When everything is instant, nothing feels merry. It’s as Seneca said of those who like constant vacations,

“Are you amazed to find that even with such extensive travel, to so many varied locales, you have not managed to shake off gloom and heaviness from your mind? As if that were a new experience! You must change the mind, not the venue.”

The reset is simple, but it means being effortful and uncomfortable on purpose. Wait before your first meal. Walk before you scroll. Work hard until you’re tired. Let the silence of your room stretch longer than feels natural. Give up a favorite thing for a week, not as punishment, but to feel its depth again when you return to it. We start to notice something strange when we do this: a cup of coffee becomes something we look forward to—not just bland routine, sex is more passionate and intimate, a glass of whiskey becomes quite a celebration, a night out with friends feels more vivid and fun. You end up with more poetic and punctuated moments.

This isn’t about becoming more productive or turning life into another project. It’s about being able to feel pleasure again. Real pleasure. The kind that lands deep in the soul. The kind that lingers after the moment ends — when you sleep fast and deep because of how hard you’ve worked, when you’re laughing with friends you’ve missed, when you taste something you’ve craved. Your life becomes more interesting and fun.

Over time, this shapes how you work, how you live, how you love. You get more comfortable with waiting, with doing the work, with having something to look forward to. You stop whining when things get hard. You stop chasing easy highs. You see discomfort as a setup for delight. You start to favor quality over quantity and immediacy. It also helps you think differently about what pleasure even is. It’s not just about fun or escape. It’s also about being present, about feeling pride and fulfillment in what you’ve earned, and about taking in the full weight of the moment to where if you died you’d be ok and glad that you lived and got to experience this. 50 Cent said it best in his song Many Men,

Sunny days wouldn't be special if it wasn't for rain,

Joy wouldn't feel so good if it wasn't for pain.

A life of constant access trains us to take things for granted. But a life with graded stretches of doing without, when something’s been earned, in a moral, spiritual and neurobiological sense, this kind of life keeps us sensitive. And deep sensitivity is the foundation of real enjoyment. Without orchestrating the preconditions for it, nothing good registers to bring us joy. With them, every sensation feels like the first time living.

You don’t have to force these sublime experiences. They emerge on their own when you give space and let the cycles of life unfold. Just focus on your purpose, do the work, stay present, and let the anticipation accumulate. You don’t need to overhaul your life. Sometimes, one less thing is enough.

It’s Tennessee Williams discussing the tragedy of too much comfort and luxury in his essay The Catastrophe of Success,

The sort of life that I had had previous to this popular success was one that required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created…

The heart of man, his body and his brain, are forged in a white-hot furnace for the purpose of conflict (the struggle of creation) and that with the conflict removed, the man is a sword cutting daisies, that not privation but luxury is the wolf at the door and that the fangs of this wolf are all the little vanities and conceits and laxities that Success is heir to—why, then with this knowledge you are at least in a position of knowing where danger lies…

Security is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney-shaped pool in Beverly Hills or anywhere at all that is removed from the conditions that made you.

Be human. Don’t endlessly consume—create. Work. Wait. Yearn. Socialize. Make Effort. Do all the unglamorous things human. Sweat, strive, fail, seduce, feel the cold, the silence, the tension in your voice when talking to someone new—and then, earn your relief later on. So if life feels flat, you don’t need louder sounds, more stimulants or exotic flavors. You don’t need to escape again. You just need to let a little space and time back in. Let hunger do its work.

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Did you like this entry? I’d love to read your thoughts on this matter. What do you think of the pleasure pain balance? How do you achieve it to live a good, happy life?

I always enjoy hearing from you, and for you to hear from each other.

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Previously,

1. Look out for next week’s post titled, “On What Kills Love by Marcel Proust.” This will only be available to paid members.