The Goldilocks Paradox: Finding 'Just Right' in a World of Extremes
Exploring satisfaction and realizing real-time that maybe that should never have been the goal to begin with
“I am out with lanterns looking for myself.” -Emily Dickinson
I haven’t felt quite like myself lately. I’ve been struggling with rumination and thought spirals that leave me feeling guilty, shameful, and utterly exhausted. As the initial novelty of living in a new place has started to wane, and I begin to really face the impact of the changes I’ve experienced in the last three months, I’m left feeling like I’m lying under a heavy weighted blanket and I can’t get up. I get lost, at times, in the paradox of my own experiences. One moment I look around at my quiet, slower life in Northwest Arkansas, and I feel immense joy and satisfaction. And then, with no rhyme or reason, the same experience can cause a wave of existential dread so high that I have no choice but to be clobbered by it. I can’t seem to figure it out, and even the fact that I am, at some subconscious level, trying to “figure it out” is in and of itself exhausting.
A few weeks ago, I booked an impromptu trip to Chicago. An Australian songstress and true rockstar, Angie McMahon, announced new tour dates in the US, and I immediately started plotting a weekend away. With a puppy at home, I felt a twinge of guilt escaping to the city, and I also knew that I needed this time alone more than anything else. I needed to catch a glimpse of myself again — a self that has recently felt more and more elusive, only catching her during the endorphin rush of a run, the quiet of a meditation practice, or when I was alone in nature. I began daydreaming of a few days spent as a flâneur in Chicago — wandering aimlessly, window shopping, sipping lattes, running by Lake Michigan, and hopefully, seeing myself again more clearly.
I arrived in Chicago on Sunday morning, and as I emerged from the stuffy subway station onto State Street downtown, I breathed in the city air. There is nothing like Chicago in the summertime, and as I felt the warm sunlight dance across my face I realized that this is what invigorates me most. This is how I know myself best — alive and alone in a city. I don’t quite know how to soften into the slower pace of my life back in Arkansas. I don’t know if it feels unnatural because it is “wrong” for me, or because I’ve been running at a different speed my entire adulthood. Perhaps it’s the coastal elite in me who feels removed from where “real things happen.” Either way, I walked to my friends apartment and felt something in the center of my being begin to expand. Like I’d spent the last few weeks feeling like a balloon that had been overinflated, and then all the air rushed out — I was stretched too thin, and lay limp on the floor. Now, with the breeze off the Lake and the bustle of tourists around me, I felt inflated once again.
And yet, everywhere you go, there you are.
While I felt closer to myself over the last few days, I also realized that I had long suffered from what I have been calling the Goldilocks Paradox. Perhaps not consciously, but there has always been a part of my mind that believes if I only found exactly the right place, the right partner, the right skincare routine, the right job, then everything would fall into perfect place. I would have the “just right” of everything and presto — satisfaction. I spend so much of my time in constant search of something “just right,” only to discover that perfect balance is elusive, and perhaps even nonexistent.
When I was single, I found myself longing for the intimacy and companionship of a partner. But in a relationship, I find myself fantasizing about the freedom and independence, which I seem to deceive myself into thinking are only available to me when I’m alone. My association of alone equals freedom is the result of years of embracing hyper-independence as a coping mechanism. It’s one of the clearest indicators of my avoidant attachment style. Each state has its comforts and its compromises, leaving me oscillating between two extremes, unable to ever feel just right.
The paradox doesn’t stop with relationships though. It extends to places, too. Back in Arkansas, I have felt detached from the world, isolated in my quiet surroundings. I have felt unsatisfied, which has led to feelings of guilt and shame, which makes me further distance myself, and then… more detachment and isolation. I’d daydream of the palpable energy of the city, of being anonymous in a crowd. Now, in Chicago, I recognize that the city hasn’t magically transformed my experience and healed me. I’m still me, carrying the same desires and doubts. If anything, the city serves as a welcomed distraction from the dissatisfaction. The hardest thing to admit to myself of late has been that none of these feelings that are emerging are actually new. They’re been simmering inside for a long time. It’s just that now my external world is quiet enough that I can finally hear them. The distraction of the city, and drinking (but that’s a whole other story), and constant socializing is gone. And I’m left to listen to my insides — a wildly unsettling reality to be faced with. Everywhere you go, there you are.
It has occurred to me that this quest for “just right” is the same as a quest for total satisfaction. As a logophile and someone who always finds deeper meaning through etymology, I found myself researching the origins of the word “satisfaction” as I wrote this article. From the 16th century, satisfaction could be understood as “information that answers a person’s demands or removes doubt.”
This stopped me in my tracks - removes doubt. I may still have a lot to learn about being a human, but one thing I know for sure is that there is no such thing as removing doubt. In fact, to have choice is to have doubt. There is only getting comfortable with doubt and uncertainty. “[We] are afraid to surrender because [we] don’t want to lose control”, as Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “but [we] never had control; all [we] had was anxiety.”
The search for perfect balance of “just right” can often distract us from the richness of the present moment. It can also cause us to toss out too quickly the porridge that is too hot or too cold, so to speak. After all, too hot? Let it cool. Too cool? Pop it in the microwave. Since when did we toss out something good simply because it was not immediately perfect? I’ve spent the last few weeks so consumed with the things that need to change about my life, that I haven’t even been acknowledging the things around me that do provide deep satisfaction. Or better yet, the things that bring me into the present and give me that elusive feeling surrender.
I’ve spent the last year meditating on satisfaction. And now, I’m finding myself startled as I write this real-time and realize that, perhaps, the goal is not simply satisfaction, but a delicate balance between satisfaction and surrender. Further, that surrender might actually be the portal to satisfaction — satisfaction with what it too hot, too cold, and just right. It’s a letting go of the constant searching and grasping for something outside of oneself. It’s a tuning in, a letting go, and a listening. My personal philosophies about life leave me weary of overly committing to either of these. A constant quest for satisfaction may well turn to a life of hedonistic indulgence. A life lived in full surrender may mean allowing my one wild and precious life to happen to me, rather than taking an active role in it’s wild unfolding.
I suppose, where I’ve landed for now though, is that this sense of dissatisfaction that I’ve been so fixated on isn’t really caused by something external — it’s a call coming from inside the house.