Satisfaction

Where do you find satisfaction? Is your satisfaction associated with need or generosity or accomplishment? Is your satisfaction cyclic, alternating with periods of feeling deprived?

This summer I have been engaged in a home improvement project of a greater scale than my own manual skills could manage. I have had to rely on others to do the kind of work I have done myself or have some experience with. I have had to learn to be satisfied with standards different than my own. This has helped me realize what my own standards for satisfaction in craftsmanship and organization are in practice.

Some people are content to live a life of hedonism. They are satisfied by periodic indulgence in travel, gourmet food or recreational psycho-pharmacology. This lifestyle is often balanced by massive dissatisfaction with other aspects of life. Hedonism is sometimes the reward for distasteful or even antisocial labor.

As a humanist, I find satisfaction in my own daily practice. My practice satisfies my need to feel I am transcending impulses and compulsions by opening my mind and awareness in the moments of my life. Even difficulties bring a certain satisfaction as I struggle with them in terms of practice. Realizing that I have gone through a challenging time with my values in gear is highly satisfying. 

Learning to gain satisfaction from the daily process of living takes a great deal of practice when age brings pain, financial problems, disease and impending death. This learning is the material of humanist practice. The resources lie within the human mind and body. Proper health maintenance, meditation and reflection provide the basis for developing those resources. Education and creative social interaction refine those resources. There is no big bonus at the end of humanist practice. Its end is natural death. However, the journey to that end is very satisfying with a deepening understanding of my own individual life experience.