The Search for Satisfaction

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness:

I wish you could know my brother, John David (JD for short)…When we were kids, JD lived by the mantra “My life would be perfect if I just had this one thing.” It’s an idea most of us embrace, even as adults; JD just expressed it more boldly and more frequently than others. When he got his driver’s license, he inherited our mom’s old Ford Taurus. After installing a more powerful stereo, which made the speakers rattle constantly, even at a low volume, he put on huge rims and tires. It was the perfect car for a moment. But by Christmas, he was over it. The rattling speakers were annoying and shorted out often, and his gargantuan rims had gone out of style.

Soon JD was begging our parents to let him buy an old used black truck he’d found at a car dealership. When I went home for a monthlong break from college, it was all he could talk about. After several weeks of begging and wheeling and dealing, he finally got his new old truck. And for an instant, all was well. But the decrepit truck had little life left, and the love affair soon ended when the truck died for good. JD had to return to driving the Taurus with the big tires and rattly speakers, longing for a better set of wheels.

Like my brother, I tend to obsess over getting the things I’m sure will make life everything it should be…What would bring you satisfaction? For all of us, there is something—one thing at any given moment—that we think will make us happy. Maybe a glance in the mirror on a bad hair day and a new skin flaw motivate you to switch to fancy hair-care products and pricey anti-aging cream. Perhaps a look at your bank account makes you long for a better-paying job. Or after a day of chasing or carting around your kids, you fantasize about a month alone on a beach.

For most of us, the things we’d like to change go much deeper: A lonely marriage. A job that requires navigating difficult relationships. An unexpected and unwelcome diagnosis. A challenge that accompanies us everywhere. Whether the thing we’d like to change is a slight nuisance or a dead weight, we spend our days looking for hope. Most of us have in our minds one thing we think would make everything better—one thing that would satisfy us.