Summer 2007

THE HALF EMPTY MASON JAR
Scrambling for Satisfaction: Blame it on TC

BY LESLIE SMITH TOWNSEND

"Mom, you're never satisfied," my 17-year-old daughter squawked. Sarah had overheard me grousing to a friend on the phone about a recent trip.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She gave me a sidewise glance. "If I were Loren, I'd hate going on vacation with you."

I felt my shoulders tense up, and a pang of guilt shot through my stomach.

It was true that the last three vacations I'd taken with my husband, Sarah's stepfather, had been semi-disasters. A June camping trip to the Canadian wilderness turned into mosquito and manual-labor hell. A family vacation in August soured when we fought about finances the first day. The prior summer, I'd whined of boredom at the beach.

Am I really that hard to satisfy? When friends ask about my vacations, I feel compelled to tell the truth, not some scrubbed-clean version, but the whole truth—the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Still, I was reeling from Sarah's words. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I do seem hard to satisfy. Say, for example, I'm craving chocolate one day, and you make a mental note to give me Godiva for my birthday. Don't bother! It will sit in the refrigerator for months because it's no longer what I want. Or maybe you buy me a shirt from Quest Outdoors, one of my favorite stores in Louisville, and I will act pleased, but I will worry how much you paid and whether you could have found a better deal. Or we meet for coffee at a quaint little café, but the service is slow, my scone is bone dry and I end up talking too much and later regretting it. Nothing is ever quite good enough.

Right now, I'm plucking loose hairs from my eyebrows while I think about friends who write more eloquently than I do. They would know where to go with this piece, how much emphasis to place on their own neurosis and when to open the piece to universality.

Is it true that I'm seldom satisfied? The answer is undoubtedly yes. I am always seeking something more — not in the materialistic sense, but in the sense that I might be missing the true meaning of life, the genuine opportunity that transforms the ordinary into something magical, the moment that signals greatness. I'm prone to suspect that others have found this greatness while it eludes me.

Where does this restlessness of spirit come from? Perhaps from a fear there's something missing in me. Some piece of substance or personality or blessing that passed me by, some essential ingredient to survival and accomplishment that I, alone, am ignorant of, so that I am never good enough.

When I complain of the unbearable heat and mosquitoes in Canada, what I'm really thinking is how badly I chose when I selected this trip. If I'd researched more or asked better questions, Loren and I wouldn't have wound up with a backcountry trapper, swampy terrain and portages meant to kill an underweight female. When fine chocolate sits uneaten until its glossy finish becomes streaked with age, it's because I'm thinking how fat I'll be if I let myself eat blackberry and hazelnut truffles, and how I'd rather gain weight on made-from-scratch brownie batter. In the end, I berate myself for being obsessed, vain and ungrateful.

This temptation to "one-up" myself has pursued me my entire life. I struggle with demons daily. I have a friend who confesses he shares a similar fate. He gives it a name: TC, for "tyrannical conscience." Whenever TC, who sits on his right shoulder, harasses him with harsh judgment, my friend puts him in his place.

I like this idea. It's TC, not me, who belabors my imperfections and suggests the secret of happiness lies forever beyond my grasp. It's TC who incites self-doubt: Don't attempt it. You'll fail. You're not good enough. You're stupid. Then I remember he's just a little green gnome, no bigger than my pinkie. Surely, I can outwit him.

I don't want to be the kind of person who's never satisfied. In my mind, I see a little old woman with exaggerated frown lines and deep grooves of disapproval etched into her forehead. Little children run from her in supermarkets. NO! That's not me! Is this how my daughter will someday remember me?

It's time I learned the art of satisfaction.

It occurs to me that satisfaction is more than a point on a line that can be calibrated for all time. Satisfaction is a whisper on the wind — a moment, yes, when you're caught up out of time and space, an observer of your own life. You see yourself walking down a neighborhood street hand-in-hand with your husband under a violet sky, and you suddenly grasp that this moment is perfect.

Last fall, Loren and I traveled to Europe. It was my first venture abroad, and I look back on it with great satisfaction. Nonetheless, if you were my good friend, and my daughter Sarah weren't around, I'd also mention that I was sick for five days, the food in Italy was disappointing and I was allergic to a small town located on the world's largest ochre deposit.


New Southerner contributing editor Leslie Smith Townsend, of Louisville., Ky., is a pastoral counselor in private practice. Her essays have been published in The Louisville Review, Arable, Church & Society and The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, and a composite excerpt of her memoir Body Beautiful is forthcoming in an anthology by the Healing Project (2007-08).

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HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY?

Satisfaction is a state of mind. When you look at a glass of water, do you see it as half empty or half full? Some of us have an immediate response. "It's half-full, of course," declares the optimist. Others say, "It depends on my mood, the day of the week, season of the year and whether it's raining." E-mail your thoughts and comments on "The Half-Empty Mason Jar" to [email protected].