Beyond Our Current Experience

The Strange Psychology of Wanting Things More Than We Enjoy Having Them

I started watching Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors. Beautiful houses. Great cars. Ridiculous watches. Private clubs. People who, at least from the street, appear to have won.

Rich. Respected. Restless.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about something: Why do so many things seem more significant before we have them?

I know that feeling.

I can remember being in high school and seeing my parents’ American Express Gold Card. Someone told me there was no limit on it.

No limit?

I had absolutely no idea what that meant. Credit limits, annual fees, interest rates… whatever. I just knew no limitsounded incredible. And gold certainly didn’t hurt.

Then there was the Cadillac Northstar engine.

Northstar. Come on.

You could have told 14-year-old me it was partially powered by material recovered from a UFO and I probably would have believed you. I didn’t know anything about engines. I just knew the way people said Northstar. It mattered.

Then there were watches.

My grandfather was a Rolex dealer, which probably explains some things. For the better part of a decade, the Day-Date President had my attention. Even the name sounded important: The President. Eventually, it became the Daytona.

I had no idea what that world actually felt like. Which, of course, gave me complete freedom to make it amazing.

That's the interesting thing about wanting something you've never experienced. Your imagination gets to set the value.

The Gold Card wasn't really a credit card to me. It represented arrival. The Northstar was more than an engine. And those watches felt like evidence that you had somehow crossed an invisible line from here to there.

Here's the funny part.

Today I own multiple Presidents and multiple Daytonas. I still like them. They're beautiful watches.

But owning them feels nowhere near as significant as wanting them once did.

I find that fascinating. There should probably be a name for this.

So… I made one up :-)

Borrowed Significance

Borrowed Significance is when we inherit the importance of something before we have enough experience—or maybe maturity—to decide how important it actually is.

Kids do this constantly. They watch adults. What makes Dad excited? What does Mom save for? What does Grandpa wear? What car makes somebody turn their head? What neighborhood do people talk about differently?

We don't understand the economics. We understand the energy. And somewhere along the way, we borrow the significance.

Then we grow up.

Except I'm not convinced we actually stop doing it. We just upgrade the objects.

The Gold Card becomes Platinum. The Northstar becomes the next car. The Rolex becomes the Richard Mille. Then it's the title, the promotion, the neighborhood, the company valuation, the number in the bank account.

The next zero.

There will always be another Northstar—something just beyond our current experience that feels like it must be different over there.

And every once in a while, you actually get there.

It is different. It can be wonderful. But it isn't another planet.

It's Tuesday.

The watch you once stared at through glass is sitting on the nightstand. The car is dirty. Something at the house needs fixed. And the credit card? Turns out they send you a bill.

Who knew.

And, you're still you.

That may be one of the more useful discoveries of adulthood: The things we imagine will change how it feels to be alive usually change the circumstances more than they change us.

I don't think that makes ambition bad. Quite the opposite.

Build something. Make money. Buy the ridiculous watch. Drive something unnecessarily fast. Take your family somewhere beautiful. Order dessert. I'm a fan.

But maybe “more” is also supposed to teach us something about the nature of more.

Every time we finally get one of these things and discover we're still pretty much the same person, the evidence piles up. The external world can make life easier, more comfortable, more interesting and more beautiful. It just seems remarkably bad at doing the work that has to happen inside of us.

Maybe the mistake wasn't wanting beautiful things.

Maybe we just gave them the wrong job.

We asked possessions to produce significance.

I think, eventually, the direction is supposed to reverse. The watch doesn't make the person significant. The person makes the watch significant.

Maybe it reminds you of your grandfather. Maybe your dad wore one. Maybe you bought it after building something you weren't sure you could build. Maybe someday your son will wear it and think of you.

Now the object isn't telling you who you are. You're telling the object what it means.

There's a pretty big difference.

Which brings me back to Your Friends & Neighbors.

Maybe the fascinating thing about keeping up with the Joneses was never really the Joneses. It was our assumption that the Joneses knew something we didn't.

That somewhere behind the gate, inside the house, underneath the Rolex, they had discovered the thing.

Maybe they hadn't.

Maybe they were looking across the street at us.

Rich. Respected. Restless.

I suspect we spend a good portion of the first half of life borrowing significance from the world around us. Maybe part of wisdom is giving some of it back.

Keep the beautiful stuff. Enjoy the hell out of it.

Just don't ask it to tell you who you are.

The Northstar was just an engine.

Turns out, the North Star we spend our lives looking for isn't something we acquire. It's something we cultivate.