Dis-ease and dissatisfaction are interesting forces in human life. We tend to assume that if something makes us uncomfortable, something must be wrong. But perhaps discomfort isn’t always a problem. Sometimes it is the very thing that gets us moving.
Hunger moves us toward food. Loneliness can move us toward relationship. Curiosity begins with the realization that what we know isn’t enough. Even injustice can create a dissatisfaction strong enough to motivate change. In that sense, dis-ease may have a useful function. It tells us that something isn’t working, or at least that our present experience no longer feels sufficient.
The difficulty comes when dis-ease becomes ensnaring. What begins as a signal for movement can become a place of residence. Dissatisfaction can become resentment. Anxiety can become identity. A wound can become a lens through which everything else is interpreted. At some point, the very thing that was supposed to motivate change begins to immobilize the individual.
This is where perception becomes important. The event itself may be only part of the story. The meaning assigned to the event becomes another part. Two people can experience the same circumstance and construct entirely different realities from it. One may see discomfort as evidence that life is against them. Another may see it as information—an invitation to reconsider a belief, change a direction, or learn something previously unseen.
The goal, then, isn’t to eliminate dissatisfaction. That might actually eliminate one of the mechanisms through which human beings grow. The question is what we do with it.
Can we experience dis-ease without immediately labeling it as bad? Can we listen to dissatisfaction without becoming its servant? Can we allow discomfort to inform us without allowing it to define us?
There is a subtle difference between being dissatisfied with something and becoming identified with dissatisfaction itself.
-The first can generate movement.
-The second can create a prison.
Growth occurs somewhere between the two—not by suppressing the discomfort and not by surrendering to it, but by becoming curious about what it is trying to reveal. The perceptual lens becomes the key. Change the meaning, and the experience begins to change with it.
Dis-ease, then, is not the enemy of well-being, but one of its messengers.
Thoughts For Thinkers 