Settling For Less

Perfection is a very subjective notion.

Objectively speaking, nothing and no one is perfect. A lot of things come close, but nothing can ever be perfect in the most absolute sense of the word. And many, many things are about as far from perfect as one can imagine. Despite the fact that absolute perfection is impossible, many people still pursue some level of perfection – what might be perfect for them – because, after all, perfection is a very subjective notion. And in so doing, they achieve success and happiness.

But the far greater majority of us use the idea that nothing is perfect as an excuse to take the easy road in life and settle for things that are insanely imperfect. We allow ourselves to be “satisfied” with less than we could have and probably should have. We are too lazy or afraid to challenge ourselves to our full potentials.

How we settle

We settle for work that doesn’t inspire us or give us the means to live a truly comfortable and free life. We waste our lives in jobs that are far below our potentials, just so that we can get by. We put up with bad bosses (who themselves are probably frustrated from settling for less), office politics, stupid rules and corporate bureaucracy, stressful commutes, boring work, and everything else, instead of doing what we love to do, with people we like to be around, in an environment that gives us a sense of accomplishment. Meanwhile, our insides rot from doing work from which we derive no joy for compensation that is below what we want and deserve.

We settle for living with less wealth than we are capable of acquiring and, therefore, with less comfort and security than we should have. We’ve been tricked into believing that having even moderate wealth is somehow wrong simply because other people don’t have it. But this is a lie. Acquiring an appropriate amount of wealth is not wrong at all, provided it has been acquired honestly and some portion of it has been offered back to help others (NOT by being taken and redistributed by government). And even if we don’t believe that having some wealth is wrong, too many of us don’t believe we are capable of building a comfortable life through wealth, so we don’t try. We either can’t come up with a vision of how to do it, or we just don’t want to put in the work required.

We settle for food with reduced nutritional value or that is even harmful to our bodies. We take the quick and easy route, rather than invest the small amount of extra time it might take to eat healthier. We buy what’s been made cheaper through mass production and the “wonders” of chemical and genetic engineering, rather than esteem ourselves enough to pay a little more for real food. We let ourselves be conditioned to believe that the overly processed crap we eat is tasty, and we don’t value our bodies enough to break free of that conditioning and fuel our bodies with the best food.

We settle for poor physical condition and, eventually, failing health because we are too lazy to do the work required in order to keep our bodies fit. We know that we need to exercise, but we’d rather just sit in front of a computer or lie in front of a television for hours being “entertained.” We don’t appreciate the satisfying feeling of pushing our bodies to new levels of achievement, the high that comes from the enzymes released as our muscles work. We don’t seek the joy of working up a good sweat. We don’t take the need for exercise seriously until we start to have problems, and usually not even then.

We settle for entertainment that offers us nothing of real intellectual or spiritual value. Our eyes and ears take in what the television, computer, movie screen or music presents, we get a brief laugh or other reaction, and then it’s gone. And we’re none the better for it. And worse, too many of us settle for entertainment that actually corrodes our minds and morals or twists our thoughts with deceitful political propaganda. And in the process of sitting and mindlessly taking in this “entertainment” pabulum, our bodies become weaker and our physical health deteriorates along with our mental health.

We settle for government that doesn’t serve the people but, instead, serves itself to our money. Instead of demanding the kind of responsible and responsive government we should have, we hand over power to self-serving elitists who use that power to enrich themselves or force their personal ideological agendas on us (usually to our detriment). Most of the time they do both. But we just settle for what we have and keep mindlessly voting the same leaches into office.

We settle for fake friendships on social networking sites instead of taking the time to nurture real friendships in the real world. Then we get more and more hooked into the virtual world and wonder why we don’t have genuine friendships and relationships that work. We settle for having little more than acquaintances in our lives, but still insist on calling them friends. And we’re OK with that because we don’t want to put in the effort that is necessary to actually build and nurture true friendship; it’s much easier to just fake it through a computer screen.

This is a big one. We settle for relationships that just don't work for us, that don’t meet our emotional needs and don’t provide the stability and support we need to confront life’s other challenges. We stay too long in relationships in which we feel deep voids, in which we love but don’t get mutual love back or in which there is really no love at all. Or worse, in which we let ourselves be used. 

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We settle for "anyone" so that we can have "someone,"
instead of holding out for "the one."

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Often, we let our hormones get us into the wrong relationship and then make children before we can correct the situation. Then we feel the added pressure to stay, despite the fact that the relationship doesn’t give us the emotional base we really need to raise those children in the best way. Some people stay in abusive relationships or tolerate being cheated on. They are too emotionally needy to leave and find something better, too weak to demand more. We settle for "anyone" so that we can have "someone," instead of holding out for "the one."

We settle for lives that are empty and unfulfilling. We feel that emptiness, and it makes us depressed. But we tell ourselves that it’s the best we could hope for, that life isn’t fair anyway, that an empty life is just common reality. We settle for being pawns of other, more powerful people. We let them control us and make us conform to ways of life that best serve their needs, not our own. We let ourselves become the servants of those we elect to serve.

We settle for not creating or building anything significant or lasting. We don’t aspire to make an impact on the world, to leave something important behind. We assume that once we die, it all fades to black nothingness anyway, so why bother?

We settle for being used and rejected, instead of needed and loved. We settle for simply existing, instead of living.

Why Do We Settle?

Not everyone is born with the talents and skills to paint a masterpiece, compose a magnum opus, write a classic, invent a world-changing technology, cure a disease, or solve a mystery of nature or science. And there are many people whose abilities are, in fact, limited by their intellect or physical state. But the majority of us are in the middle: we have a lot of potential, but few of us take advantage of our potential. We are content to settle.

But why do we settle for so much less? Why don't we live life to the fullest instead of merely existing? Why don’t we go after what we really want to the best of our abilities? 

Often we doubt those abilities, and sometimes we don’t even realize what skills and talents we really have. Many people just allow the voices of others to take root inside their minds and accept the notion that they “can’t” do better than what they have settled for, that they just aren't good enough. And many, to be honest, are just lazy and don’t want to do the work. I think a lot of older people just become tired, look at the short amount of time they have left, and decide that it’s not worth the bother to try for more.

Ultimately, perhaps, settling for less is about fear.

So many people, when they get tired of settling for less, get angry and demand that society should give them more, because it’s “not their fault” and the world "owes them something." They claim that others (usually those who have not settled) have too much and somehow acquired it at other people’s expense. They don’t look at themselves and challenge themselves to do better. They settle for demanding that the government intervene to take from those who have chosen not to settle, and give it to them. And those in government, always looking at how they can hook more votes, oblige.

Settling for less in life brings despair and depression. It provides fertile ground for mental and emotional disorders. It can lead to conflict. It can push people over the edge into violence against others or themselves. It's a sickness, a condition that does not need to be. 

But it is fear-based, and like everything that is fear-based, it can be overcome. The first step is working to overcome the fear, to embrace our talents and believe in our dreams, to change "can't" to "can" or even "will." Fear is a tough nut to crack – especially since old habits are very hard to change – but it can be broken. There is no good reason to allow fear to make you settle for less.

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I got started on this topic because several recent events made me realize that often in my life, I have settled. In many of the areas I mentioned – work, health, relationships – I have settled for less than I wanted, less than I deserved. And worst of all, I recognized that what I have really settled for is BEING less than I have had the potential to be. And when I thought deeply about it, I really did not like the feeling… I didn’t like it at all.

And while now might seem like a rather late stage to decide to stop settling and start being more, there really is not a bad time. It can never be too late to turn things around.