In the world today, delicious is a delightfully triggering word. For most of us it will conjure up memories of our favorite foods from ‘that great restaurant down the street’, or childhood memories from our mother’s kitchen. The Korean YouTube phenomenon of ‘Muk Bang’ videos that show people gorging themselves on delectable dishes has also taken the world by storm. But we don’t usually think about the word ‘delicious’ in association with dissatisfaction, so I’d like to help you understand how, in some circumstances, the most delicious thing that we should truly savor with positive feelings is our own dissatisfaction.
Before you accuse me of making up another ‘group think-like’ Orwellian concept, I’d like us to think about what dissatisfaction truly is. The prefix ‘dis’ means ‘not’, and the root verb ‘satisfy’ simply means to fulfill a need, requirement or expectation. So to be ‘dissatisfied’ means that you are lacking something that you needed or expected. In some circumstances, dissatisfaction can truly be a negative thing. For instance, the dissatisfaction of being fired or laid off from your job, realizing that your child’s failing school or starting to use drugs, or not having enough money or food to sustain your life. These are all sources of dissatisfaction and emotional pain in their truest terms.
But in the world today, how often do we feel dissatisfied about things that really won’t have any lasting consequences in our lives? Many people feel dissatisfied because they can’t buy something they wanted, or they feel their job isn’t good enough, or maybe their romantic partner isn’t exciting enough. And in the modern societies that we all live in, who could blame them?
Our societies are deeply submerged in a sea of marketing and various forms of media that portray worlds, and ways of living, that are nothing more than profitable fantasies. In the movie, show or YouTube video, this character has it all, so why can’t I? This food blogger eats amazing, delicious foods everyday, why can’t I? This woman in the movie just divorced her husband, went on a trip to Bali and then met the man of her dreams. Maybe I can do that too!
If we are asked directly “Do you really think this is realistic?” most of us will quickly respond “No”. But that doesn’t mean that the scenario has left our minds… It doesn’t mean that we will never use it as a point of comparison for our own lives, and we’re inundated with thousands of these depictions of how we, and our lives, ‘should be’. But we really need to ask ourselves, do these depictions that we see in various forms of media truly show a life that satisfies our TRUE needs?
If we really want to understand our core needs, we should look back to the lives of our earliest ancestors. As our species evolved, certain needs had to be satisfied, or we wouldn’t have been able to survive long enough to produce offspring. Those needs were basic things like food, water and shelter.
However, some are more abstract things like communities that can share heavy labor and care for us when we are sick or elderly. Hope is another abstract concept that I feel constitutes a basic need. Hope is the fire that ignites the engine of our motivation to wake up in the morning and believe that our efforts will lead to a better tomorrow. That is a driving force that has always been with us.
Once these basic needs are met, people will usually be able to say that they are ‘happy’ or ‘satisfied’. But as soon as the hut next door is bigger, stronger or newer than my hut, I might think to myself, “I need a new hut”. And it’s precisely these impulses that lead society forward as we improve the quality and efficiency of everything in our lives.
But the rise of television and the internet led to a kind of visual marketing and storytelling that is much more pervasive and penetrating than anything in human history. And the marketing images, commercials, influencers and TV shows are not limited to portraying real life situations in realistic ways, nor should they be! But we have to ask ourselves if we are truly ‘filtering out’ these images, ideals and expectations in a healthy way? Or are we simply consuming them with innocent enthusiasm without thinking about the effect they have on how we see our own lives and our expectations?
There are two times in my life when I realized that the image of ‘a person’s needs’ in pop culture, and my actual needs are very different. One of those times was when I decided to stop partying and drinking in the gay bars, and the other was when I started fasting.
In the early years of my life in Korea, it was not easy to adjust to being a gay man living and working in a society that does not accept LGBTQ people. Even America hadn’t passed the same-sex marriage legislation yet, and Korea was no where near considering such things. So I, like most LGBTQ Koreans, had to get used to a life where I was either pretending to be straight Monday to Friday, or I’d hide my sexuality entirely and be a mystery to everyone. It was so stressful, and the weekends were really the only times when I could go out to Itaewon (Seoul’s ‘foreigner district’) and head up to ‘Homo-hill’ where all the gay bars were. I had never been a big drinker, but 90% of the LGBTQ meeting places were bars or dance clubs, so that made drinking unavoidable.
After a few years of the ‘as seen on TV gay life’, I felt exhausted, lonely and no closer to a truly happy life. So around the time I turned 29, I decided to stop drinking, stop going to the clubs, and focus on the urban sustainability group I was running, my teaching job, and the few friends who I could spend time with away from the clubs. Although my life wasn’t as flashy or exciting as before, I felt healthier, more relaxed, less lonely and I could start to manage my money better. So the lifestyle that would be too boring for TV was far far better for me.
My journey with fasting started around 2014. I had struggled to manage my food addiction and my weight throughout my life, and I could see very clearly that the typical methods of weight loss that are touted by thin personal trainers and doctors was not effective for my circumstances. So I started to search for alternatives. During one of my online searches, I came across a French documentary simply titled, “The Science of Fasting”.
Little did I know what a huge impact it would have on my life. It was a scientifically rigorous documentary that detailed the history of fasting’s use as a treatment for various conditions across Eastern Europe and the US, and it also detailed the actual mechanisms in our body that make fasting so effective for weight loss. After watching it, I had finally found a method that really seemed promising for my circumstances. It’s free, it can be started at any time and requires no special medicines, equipment or materials of any kind; just lots of water.
The first time I fasted, it was only for 24 hours, but I remember feeling a bit apprehensive about it. Would I really be ok if I didn’t eat ANYTHING for 24hrs? Sure enough, I finished my work day without eating, got home and did a bit of housework before resting on the sofa to watch a movie. By the time I was ready to go to sleep I realized that I was physically fine. I didn’t feel bad at all. The only stress I had was that my mind wanted food. I wanted to eat something for pleasure and comfort, not because I was hungry.
Since then, I have done multiple extended water fasts longer than 7 days, my longest fast being 22 days. And during that 22-day fast I felt quite good on most days and lost 15 kgs. It showed me so clearly how valuable my Zen practice was. Thanks to my practice, I had developed a certain amount of discipline and control over my ‘mind’s noisyness’, so I could see that most of my eating habits were based on emotions and pleasure, and they were not at all related to health or my real needs. From that time I have tried to eat only 1 or 2 meals a day and do occasional extended fasts beyond a couple of days. Of course I still enjoy food, but I try to remember that my body really doesn’t need much food to function well. One well-balanced meal is more than enough. And I’m sure our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors spent most of their days eating with similar infrequency.
In both of these situations, I had to give up things that pop culture, and all this visual media, enshrine as being parts of a happy life. And the act of giving them up did feel mentally challenging and boring at times, but in the end, the dissatisfaction I felt was a signal of the healthy changes taking place. I wanted to change my life for the better; to become a happier and healthier new version of myself. But how can we become a person we have never been without doing things that we have never done? So the discomfort we feel when we make life changes that push our own boundaries into new territory do create a certain amount of discomfort and dissatisfaction in us, but it is precisely that dissatisfaction that shows us we are on the right path.
Now that you have followed me along this mental journey, you can probably understand what I mean by ‘delicious dissatisfaction’. It’s the struggle, stress or discomfort we feel when we are working hard on bettering our lives. Of course our temporary, ephemeral emotions tell us, “This is no fun!”, but deep inside, we know that we are satisfying our true needs. After some time passes, and we start to see positive results, it truly does become ‘delicious dissatisfaction’.