The Endless Pursuit of More While Hitting 'New Normals'
Materialism and Hedonic Adaptation
Today’s newsletter is a personal reflection on materialism and hedonic adaptation.
The Story
Movies were a significant part of my childhood, especially Marvel films. I vividly remember falling in love with Spider-Man and New York City in 2012, when I first watched The Amazing Spider-Man. I was a 10-year-old kid back then. Since then, New York had lived in my mind as a place of magic, ambition, and endless possibility. Twelve years later, I moved here for my graduate studies at New York University, located in the heart of the city.
The first two to three months in New York felt surreal. It genuinely felt like I was living in the Marvel movies I had grown up watching. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Brooklyn Bridge, while crossing from Brooklyn into Manhattan. It was a view that had been my wallpaper for years.
But over time, even the most iconic sights of New York started blending into my everyday routine. It’s not that they don’t make me happy anymore, but they amaze me less now. They’ve become part of a new normal. And with that new normal comes a new chase - “Now that I’m in New York, I want to work hard enough to afford a beautiful home in one of these towers.” And when that happens, that too will become the new normal. Then I’ll want a bigger house in a taller tower. And so on. The pursuit is endless.
The Inference
Happiness derived from external, materialistic sources is inelastic. This means that the initial spike of joy I felt during my first two or three months in New York didn’t last, and no matter how much I try to hold onto it, it eventually fades.
You experience something called as ‘hedonic adaptation’ -
Hedonic adaptation describes how humans become insensitive to new stimuli, and quickly readjust to an emotional baseline. Therefore, the stimulus needed to create an emotion, like happiness or excitement, needs to be more intense than the last stimulus in order for someone to feel its effects.
That’s how we arrive at a new normal. Each high is followed by a plateau, and we subconsciously begin chasing the next big high to feel something again.
The inferences raised a few questions in my mind.
The Questions
Is being materialistic inherently a bad trait, if you’re ultimately left wanting more each time you attain what you once desired?
Is arriving at your new normal, the very place you once manifested and worked tirelessly to reach, somehow ungrateful, just because it doesn’t excite you anymore?
And what was it, really, that I was most proud of when I made it to New York? Was it the city itself, or the version of me that got here?
The Lessons
Treat material successes as the ‘earned’ by-products of who you’ve become in the process, and not the primary thing to obsess over. I love New York. I manifested being here, no doubt. But I never obsessed over just being in New York. My real obsession was with studying at a top-tier university to unlock something even bigger in life, something I couldn’t achieve during my undergrad years, but finally fulfilled in grad school. The university and the city were simply by-products of who I had become in the process. Obsess over something bigger, like the person you’re becoming to earn these by-products.
Chasing materialism is an endless pursuit. You keep hitting new normals and keep wanting more. Knowing where and when to stop is important. But for me? I don’t feel the need to define that stop just yet. I’m 22. I’m young, with energy and excitement running through my veins. I don’t want to hold myself back or draw lines too soon. Maybe there will come a time, late in my 20s or early 30s, when I’ll feel the need to define what ‘enough’ looks like. But for now, I’m okay chasing.
The journey is all there is. If you ask me how I felt seeing the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, ever since I first saw it in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 back in 2014, I’d say that it wasn’t about the bridge, but it was about everything that led me there. The people I met. The projects I poured myself into. The failures I stumbled through. The lessons I learned. The way I grew. It was a culmination of everything I had worked on to get there. So yes, you’ll keep hitting new normals. You’ll keep wanting more. But every once in a while, it’s worth pausing to realize just how far you’ve come. Because in the end, the journey is all that there is :)
Conclusion
So the next time you catch yourself chasing something, whether it’s a car, a city, a job, or a lifestyle, pause for a moment. Ask yourself: who am I becoming in this chase? Because the real reward isn’t the thing you get. It’s a by-product of the person you become in the pursuit of chasing that material, a goalpost that is always moving, making your once sought after achievements as the new normals.
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