I have a habit of eating biscuit/cookie with my morning tea. Before I venture out for my morning walk I take my tea along with a particular type of biscuit/cookie. Other day I bought one packet of biscuits and opened it with my morning tea. To my dismay I found the biscuits inside broken into pieces. Though all the pieces were there I felt unhappy about it. Drinking morning tea with pieces of biscuits felt totally unsatisfactory. Even though the number of biscuits I ate was as usual, I felt somewhat incomplete?
Why So? Why the broken biscuits gave me a feeling of incompleteness or unhappiness? Was it my habit that was coming into play because of which I felt unhappy. But I had eaten the same number of biscuits as I eat everyday albeit in broken pieces. Why I was feeling so? Probably it is my mental conditioning? Or is it something else? Do you also feel this way?
I do not know the neuroscience behind it but I think a human being tries to find completeness in the activities that he undertakes. Incomplete things create a gnawing sensation in his mind that something is missing. We are a species where we try to find completeness, symmetry in our day to day life. Probably our brain has evolved in this fashion. What are your thoughts on this?
That reminded me a story.
The story of Missing Goat
It all started one lazy Sunday afternoon in a small town near Toronto in Canada. Two school-going friends had a crazy idea. They rounded up three goats from the neighborhood and painted the numbers 1, 2 and 4 on their sides.
That night they let the goats loose inside their school building.
The next morning, when the authorities entered the school, they could smell something was wrong. They soon saw goat droppings on the stairs and near the entrance and realized that some goats had entered the building.
A search was immediately launched and very soon, the three goats were found. But the authorities were worried, where was goat No. 3? They spent the rest of the day looking for goat No.3.The school declared classes off for the students for the rest of the day.
The teachers, helpers, guards, canteen staff, boys were all busy looking for goat No. 3, which, of course, was never found.
Simply because it did not exist.
Those among us who in spite of having a good life are always feeling a “lack of fulfillment” are actually looking for the elusive, missing, non-existent Goat No.3.
From ( https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/story-missing-goat-3-ann-p)
What was happening with me when I ate broken biscuits? Was I searching for that elusive completeness of the biscuits?
The story of missing goat syndrome is very instructive. We are always trying to find that something which will make us happy and fulfilled ignoring things that we have. Is it not?
Tell me how do you handle this kind of dissatisfaction? How do you manage the missing goat syndrome in your own life?
The Japanese concept of Wabi- Sabi may be helpful here, I think. In traditional Japanese aesthetics, Wabi-Sabi is a world view which glorifies the nature of acceptance of transience and imperfection. So how can we develop that world view? What practices one can follow to do that? Let me know. What do you think?
“ We need to learn how to want, what we have, not to have what we want, in order to get steady and stable happiness.” Dalai Lama.
I enjoyed reading the post. Very nice and thought provoking.
Thank you Sir for taking out time to read the post and comment.
Very true sir.we find such things in every day
Yes it is very useful. Thank u sir
Thank you
Interesting Madhav!
Just wondering, while not stressing on not finding the Goat no3 is good, but inaction to not search is against the law of Karma.
Pursuit to perfection in my limited view, is in order, but the humility to accept the outcome without regret is grace
Yes very true. So what Gita tells should be followed. A man should perform his duties without being attached to the outcome.
Great…..Thoughtfull things….Useful for me in Life…Thanks sir
Thank you for taking out time to read the blog.
I am converting my mental thought patterns to say only what I want. I do not judge what I want. I simply accept it. Instead of judgment, I am working on accepting myself. Nice post.
Very good way to keep oneself focussed and Happy
Without connection with the true self, everything remains meaningless. To feel really good you have to start within out. Not the other way round. Thank you.
Thank you
Blessings, … you have asked perhaps the most important question that can be pondered by humanity … we will feel this way because precisely because there is NOTHING in this earthly, material realm that will fill our hearts and unleash our soul’s mission, joy, and love … thus, we feel empty and unfulfilled, even after accomplishing or accumulating all the things we thought would make us ‘happy’ and ‘content’ in life .
You touched a very important point about Soul’ mission. Thank you
It all has to do with what you believe in yourself. Let me go a little bit psychologically. Your thought that you can’t achieve anything is taken by your conscious mind and it will impose it on sub-conscious mind. The law of mind is what you believe. Your sub-conscious mind takes, whatever your conscious mind gives it, without reasoning and makes sure that it happens. You will not have any control over its actions that’s why you feel like this. Your conscious mind is like captain and sub-conscious mind is like worker. whatever captains says, worker will believe it as right and does it without questions and the whole work is done by it.
Even after achieving things we’ve always wanted if we still feel incomplete then we have to understand what is it that we actually wanted to achieve? Nice post.
Yes. As they say a soul searching is necessary.
My solution was to stop judging myself. I do not apply words like good or bad to myself. Whenever I hear myself saying, “I should,” I stop myself, because whatever comes out next is a judgment on me for not doing the thing I was about to say I should do.
That is a simple and effective practice to follow. Thank you for sharing it here
I have seen this to be true when they lack spirituality. That is, a deeper sense of purpose.
Yes true indeed.
There are a number of strategies to stop the cycle. The one that worked for me was a variant of mindfulness. I realized that I was internalizing what I thought other people expected of me, and then I was finding myself worthless because I could not meet these expectations. Excellent web page. Very decent and informative.
Thank you for sharing your way of dealing with this.
Humans were not made only to self serve. We tend to be truly happy and content only when transcend ourselves, rather than just fulfilling our every desire. That’s why being materialistic is rarely fulfilling, though it is comfortable. People often confuse comfort with happiness
You bought out beautifully the difference between comfort and Happiness.
I personally know well, one rich man that was only happy when he spread joy to his family. When he stopped doing that, he became miserably depressed and developed many health problems. He had everything but felt empty. Frankly, he was empty because he stopped living, stopped caring, and had no future hopes or aspirations…Just sits in his beautiful and expensive house and watches TV and movies. That said, he refuses to believe in anything more that what he can see or touch. His lack of spirituality and having no meaning in his life have left him unhappy. He knows and admits it.
Yes Purposeful life is necessary for living a fulfilled and happy life.
Excellent blog.
Because the person chased a fake version of what they want.
Truly great write-up Madhav Ji, your starting lines with childhood habits, & story of missing goat, is truly enjoying & learning part of how mindsets behaviour works.
In short just wana say Be careful what we have, coz Someone is always on what we have.
As we make goals, and set out to achieve different things we must look at the true depth of thise achievements , and whether that is in line with what we truely seek.
I think we will only feel complete once we have satisfied our spiritual hunger.
Yes. But then what is our spiritual hunger?
We are driven by our wants, just like an engine is driven by its fuel.
All human beings are to some degree dissatisfied with their lives, even those who become highly successful or wealthy with what they achieve. There is a reason for this. The one thing we are missing in our lives is that we are disconnected from our true Spiritual Selves
How one can connect with one’s true spiritual self?
One reason is of course that human nature is such that we never achieve everything we want. As soon as you think you do, you have new ideas, plans or aspirations to make your life more interesting or even worth living.
Well I am not a girl, but the above statement exactly explains my state of mind for almost a period of 2 years and the truth is no one can answer this question for you. You have to sort it out for yourself and alas I am still unable to answer this question for myself !
It is human nature to possess. The moment he sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels, he takes pictures of things in the world and stores them into his mind, and lives inside.
To avoid this dissatisfaction invest time for your mental and physical wellness.
And don’t expect anything thing from none because it always hurts.
Thank you
It is important to remember that when we analyze we are working with our mind which would be biased with our perception with different degrees. It is the mind which is of generally positive frame having constructive approach could feel bad for not achieving the goal.Such momentary dissatisfaction is normal when mind is running to analyze “what went wrong” and shares with his friends or trustworthy people.
The life is for continuous experimenting where we would be climbing up in our mission and fall also irrespective of our background.
Simply, I try to find fulfillment in my life, otherwise, this situation gives me a depressive mood and I feel uncomfortable. What is important here is what gives me fulfillment in my life. The genuine fulfillment for me is self-improvement.
Learning new things, philosophizing, improving my foreign language, writing, reading, exercising, playing chess, having conversations about intellectual topics like philosophy, science, cultures, etc. are prominent ways of self-improvement for me.
Ultimately, questions like this are extremely difficult to distill into a few simple rules, but the fact is, if you take care of yourself physically and mentally, always ensure you don’t stagnate, and have a good circle of friends around you to keep you smiling, there is very little you won’t be able to deal with when tragedy strikes.
The universal truth is that life will always be a mixture of pleasure and pain.
Fulfillment is the key to life. It is the reason we live. It is performing those acts that ignite your true being. It is being yourself unapologetically. It is being driven by our own volition. Doing those things you could do for free. Fulfillment is not a metaphor, it is being the person who will wish to be all the time.
What struck me the most was ” Doing those things you could do for free”. A very different take on what fulfillment means. Thank you for sharing.
In my life, I have this understanding of my fulfillment to be helping other people. It is a joyous moment for me to help someone. My grandfather said, “you can drink a keg of palm wine for a decade” that is to say whatever you do for other people gives a reward even when it has taken years apart.
Yes service to others is a way of living a fulfilled life. Thank you.
Fulfillment has one principle and that is service. It is being there for yourself and others, engaging in those things that are bigger than yourself.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The bottom rungs are the most “important” and if those are secure in those we can achieve the higher rungs which pertain more to self fulfillment.
Surrender to life. Learn to work with the simple, daily occurrences that you witness throughout the day.
“Surrender to life”. A very good suggestion. But sometimes I feel as if I have become passive if I start surrendering. What is your take on this?
I suggest you pay attention to when your mind starts trying to “fix” things in the outside world. Just be aware of how much your psyche tries to control things. You’d be astonished.
Yes very true. We have an acquired tendency to control things.
Fulfillment is “found” when you, the one in there, stop resisting everyday moments in life, and instead work with them. Learn to harmonize with life, to participate in the good, bad, and ugly, and fulfillment will find you.Underneath it all, you are fulfillment. Let go of your need to find it, and you will realize it’s been there all along.
A simple and wonderful suggestion. But I think difficult to implement in life. Thank you
Fulfillment is not attained by some action. If you look carefully, you will see that at so many points in your life, you thought, “If this happens, my life will become complete.” When you were a child you thought, “If I get this toy, my life will be complete.” You got that, but after a few weeks you didn’t care about it. Life did not attain fulfillment.
Whatever action you may have performed, life has not attained any fulfillment. Fulfillment will not come because of some action that you perform. Only if your inner nature is complete, your life will attain fulfillment.
You are already fulfilled and complete. You don’t need to do anything else to feel fulfilled. You are born on earth to live. There is no purpose of life. Life itself is the purpose of this universe.
Every individual has their own designated life pattern and cannot be compared to others . Instances can be compared but not situations .Same way, the meaning of life fulfillement varies for all mortals … For someone named *A* it could be Career , for *B* it could be Adventure and so one..So find your purpose of life and what best suits your purpose . It could be any call.
What is complete. Human can never be complete or satisfied every time success makes a new need. Sometimes it happens and also good to feel lost or disconnected it helps to find onself that he losts in impressing others.
Before read this i was simply in a mood of down and out now i felt motivated, thanx.
The basic source of all happiness is a sense of kindness and warm-heartedness towards others. We are all the same as human beings. We are born the same way, we die the same way, and we all want to lead happy lives.The key to happiness is peace of mind. This is not something that can be bought. Inner peace has to be cultivated by each of us from within. So nothing is complete or incomplete.
At the heart of this seeking is the need to know who we are and why we are here. What is this journey we call life all about?
This sense that something is missing is often an invitation to become more aware of our essence and who we are beyond the surface level of our life and our conditioned self.
We notice an inner tug of war between the part of us that tells us we should just be grateful and the part of ourselves that tells us there must be more.
I experienced a dark night of the soul and was really suffering even though I had SO much to feel grateful for. The dark night of the soul which is more accurately the dark night of the personality becomes an initiation into living a life with deeper presence, connection, fulfillment, alignment, and meaning.
When we are overly identified with our personality, which includes our thoughts, emotions, and bodily responses we lose touch with our essence. We’re disconnected from the qualities of our souls such as integrity, love, authenticity, creativity, inner wisdom, courage, joy, power, and inner peace.The more we strive and try to force this inner sense of well-being and flourishing the more constricted we feel.
As humans, we have the urge to blossom in our own unique way – we thrive in doing so every day of our lives. We dig to find ourselves and strive to reach that ultimate feeling of well being and meaningfulness. At times it’s family stability. Other times it’s excelling in our career. Whatever it is that we do it’s all an attempt to self-actualize. But wait a minute. That’s all easier said than done. You know the time where you gave something in your life your all and put in the effort and still felt incomplete or dissatisfied? This is because most of the time we forget the golden rule for well being which lies in one simple word—balance.
As usual your article force me to think and got the answer is “Balance” Thank you
That is really a thoughtful comment. You added an altogether different perspective to what I wrote. Yes, balance is an important thing in life. Completely agree with that. But I always feel what is balance really?