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Fun and Satisfaction by John Hanley Satisfaction has to
do with my experience of life; it's the experience I have when whatever's
going on for me is all that needs to go on for me. I would say that
I find myself in a continuous state of satisfaction in my life. Now, satisfaction
has its ups and downs; sometimes I feel joyful and sometimes I feel
sad. Yet feeling sad doesn't mean I'm not satisfied--I'm just feeling
sad. When I feel joy, that's the positive side, the frosting on
the cake. Joy has a positive
charge at the moment that I feel it; satisfaction, on the other
hand, doesn't have that charge. While joy is that sense of expectation
I've been holding that I now experience as being fulfilled, satisfaction
is: "Everything is fine; the world has served up to me exactly
what I want." Joy goes a little further. It says, "I thought
I wanted this--I got this--and wow! Now I've got joy." It would
have been okay not to have gotten joy, but it certainly is delightful
to bring home the bacon-to set out to do something and do it. Satisfaction is spawned
by internal sources while joy comes more from external sources.
Joy has to do with results and goals, while satisfaction includes,
but is not inclusive of results, and goals. Satisfaction comes from
being able to deal with the world the way we see it and the way
it is presented. But to pull off of satisfaction, I have to be saying
to myself, "This experience should be different than it is."
When I set that up, I go into negativity. Clearly, dissatisfaction
occurs when I have an expectation that's not being fulfilled-when
I think something is not working the way it could work, should work,
or was supposed to work. There is no dissatisfaction when I get
that the world is exactly perfect as it is. When I'm perfect in
my participation--accepting that things are the way they are--there
can't be dissatisfaction. If I want some particular facet of life to be different from the way it is, the first thing I have to do is be willing to accept it totally the way it is-not accept it so that it will go away--but make it totally fine. Then, and only then, can I move forward to the next goal. |
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