The Trap of Looking Elsewhere

The chase for a ‘better’ kind of life obscures the real beauty found in simple, unpolished moments.

Fulfillment comes when we stop searching for meaning elsewhere and attend to the life in front of us. Valerii Apetroaiei/Getty Images

A glamorous party in a movie where everyone is rich, good-looking, and successful.

Glitzy social media posts where everyone seems to be having the time of their life.

Idyllic photos of far-off paradises where all the colors are more vibrant than the colors outside the window.

These kinds of images confront us in entertainment and advertising almost nonstop. They tap into and intensify a current of thought that already exists in most people’s minds, at least occasionally. The current of thought goes like this: Real life is going on somewhere else. True, exciting, fulfilling, enchanting lives are being lived by other people—while all that I have is my ordinary self and my boring old normality.

That deflating sensation can cause a restlessness inside like that of a feverish patient who just can’t get comfortable on his own bed and keeps tossing and turning. Not infrequently, people pursue experiences—a cruise, a night at a fancy restaurant, a dating relationship—because this is the stuff of Hollywood, riches, and fame; these are the kinds of places and experiences where the real action takes place (we’re told), where we maybe, just maybe, could abandon our place among the bystanders and step into the spotlight.

Entertainment and advertising often present a world of effortless glamour that makes ordinary life feel dull by comparison. cottonbro studio/Pexels

Feeding the Dream

Advertisers are, of course, all too happy to promise just such a transformation if we buy their products or services or visit their establishments. This is the basic, unspoken promise behind all advertising: “That’s right,” the advertisement seems to say. “If you buy this, you‘ll go from being a Nobody to being a Somebody. That elusive ’real life’ will be suddenly within reach.”

Of course, if the cruise turns out to be tiring, crowded, and chintzy, or the restaurant turns out to be not quite fancy enough, or the date turns out to be less good-looking than their online profile and no sparks fly, we’re that much more disappointed. Like the horizon, “real life” just keeps receding before us. Some people spend their whole lives reaching for that next thing that promises to inaugurate the elusive, authentic, star-studded life.

The search for "real life" elsewhere often blinds us to the richness of the everyday spaces we already inhabit. Dmytro Sheremeta/Shutterstock

Novelist and essayist Walker Percy recognized this strange dissatisfaction most people experience when he noted the irrational excitement people have when their town or neighborhood gets featured in a movie, show, or news article. Percy put it this way in his novel “The Moviegoer”:

“Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.”

It’s as if people find their validation only when what is familiar to them appears on the big screen. It’s as if it isn’t real or valuable unless it takes on these larger-than-life proportions that we dream of. We struggle to recognize our own Main Street as a significant place until it’s plastered across a national newspaper’s front page or forms the backdrop of a glossy film scene.

Ordinary life contains the depth, companionship, and meaning often obscured by the chase for cinematic experiences. Duluapics/Shutterstock

On Their Own Merit

Percy linked this dissatisfaction to our inability to properly see things on their own merits. All of the baggage associated with the fame and advertising surrounding the Grand Canyon, for instance, which builds up a smothering weight of expectation, makes it almost impossible to actually see and appreciate the canyon for its own sake.

For the tourist, “the thing is no longer the thing as it confronted the Spaniard [who discovered it]; it is rather that which has already been formulated—by picture postcard, geography book, tourist folders, and the words ‘Grand Canyon,’” Percy wrote in an essay called “The Loss of the Creature.”

“Where the wonder and delight of the Spaniard arose from his penetration of the thing itself, from a progressive discovery of depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc., now the sightseer measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex.”

The FOMO Trap

This restless dissatisfaction also causes the phenomenon popularly called “FOMO”—“fear of missing out.” This fear can become so dominant that some people live enslaved to it, rushing from place to place, goal to goal, event to event, and relationship to relationship with a barely suppressed panic, a fear that something exciting is happening somewhere else and they’re going to miss it. They long for that authentic experience, yet nothing seems to quite satisfy.

On the occasions when someone finds what they’re looking for, however briefly, they say, “This is where it’s at”—where “it” stands for an indefinable state of euphoria that includes elements of authenticity, action, fulfillment, and the realization of dreams.

Life becomes more lovely when we rediscover the beauty in small, unassuming moments. Maria Sbytova/Pexels

Where Is Reality, Really?

But what if real life wasn’t “somewhere else”? What if fulfillment came not from grand, dramatic moments of epic dimensions, but in the grateful embrace of the little, ordinary moments that—after all—make up most of our lives? I suspect this view is closer to the truth.

This is the shift in perspective that allows what Percy describes as “the recovery of the creature”—which is to say that life, reality, and meaning often become available to us as soon as we stop looking for them somewhere else.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a beautiful letter to his son about romance in which he said, “The ’real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to.”

In other words, the ideal isn’t to be looked for somewhere else but in the eyes of the person right in front of you. This principle can be applied more broadly than just relationships, too: The beautiful town you’re looking for is the one you live in, if you have eyes to see. The exciting life story you yearn for is the life you’re living because no life is meaningless, even if it doesn’t attract the notice of the world press.

That perspective requires an acceptance of imperfection. It might be true that the restless person’s town, house, spouse, or self isn’t as beautiful and idyllic as it could be. In fact, that’s certainly true (no one and nothing is perfect). But the solution—I would propose—isn’t to go looking somewhere else for some unattainable perfection but rather to learn to see the perfection in each normal thing, each ordinary day, each familiar face—to see them as the inexplicable gifts that they are.

True contentment becomes possible when we stop chasing idealized versions of life and embrace the one we actually have. Maria Sbytova/Shutterstock

Is that a surrender to mediocrity? I don’t think so. I’m not at all convinced there are any mediocre lives, only mediocre attitudes toward life. This perspective involves a realization that the ideal exists in the real, despite its imperfections. Reality is rough, imperfect, and sloppy—and that’s part of what makes it lovable. In fact, the imperfections, sorrows, hardships, and dullness of “ordinary life” (as if there were such a thing) are the shadows that accompany real depth, the grit that accompanies real authenticity—as opposed to the shiny, smooth, yet one-dimensional unreality of the movie screen.