He was a dissatisfied man. Not unhappy with anything in particular, mind you, just possessed of a general sort of malaise that strikes even the best of us on the best of days. The kind of unease for which countless pharmaceutical companies have tried to market unnumbered chemical cures. Cures that would numb, even out the troughs and rises of your daily emotional rollercoaster, and remove the pins and needles, pleasant and hurtful both, of even the smallest of daily victories and disappointments.
But he was uneasy, and he wouldn’t seek help, not of the chemical sort, not if it involved going to the trouble and embarrassment of opening himself up to a total stranger with a clipboard, and to the perceived failure of popping a red, green, blue pill three times a day before meals, instead of just manning up, pulling up his breeches, setting his jaw, and facing the world.
There was nothing to face, really. Just that nagging bother that something’s wrong, that something could be better. His job, perhaps? Objectively viewed, he did pretty well; smart, educated, knowledgeable, personable, and professionally in a position to enjoy the fruits of years of expertise. Maybe his health? False alarm again, all seemed well there, he was a somewhat fit, 40-something heterosexual male, arguably in the prime of life thanks to years of reasonable exercise and diet, mixed with a generally good attitude. Friends? Romance? Personal interests? Check, check, check, all there. He’s a good guy, his friends all say so.
Except for the unsettling sense that something just was not as it should be.
Then there was the anger — the sudden busts of aggression toward would-be attackers, the desire to unleash adrenaline-fueled rage on an imagined evil-doer who would not show himself, the poltroon And the heroism, the endlessly played-out scenarios of rescuing damsels in distress, or saving the life of foreign dignitaries from fiendish terrorists that never came. Thankfully, too, since every time the man was faced with the need to spring into action, he usually ended up blankly confounded, imagining what he ought to have done, for days following. What the French call l’espirit de l’escalier, “what you should have said”. And still, he wasn’t slow-witted, just, well, maybe a little bit. Walter Mitty, eat your heart out, you’re a good man nonetheless.
So, what’s wrong? Nobody knows, nobody will probably ever know. The man has dreams of escaping to a far-off land, of abandoning his stable-but-dull career for a lemonade stand on some tropical beach, of turning his personal habits around and becoming a testosterone-dripping he-man for his lady friend, of founding a company and developing it into a mighty conglomerate, or of being recognized for some sort of act of international heroism as is his due. He somehow knows, though, that these will all remain just that, dreams and fantasies. Maybe, in his gut, it’s this very knowledge, fervently deny it though he does, that causes his discontent-in-the-midst-of-seeming-plentitude. Perhaps, it’s what prevents him from being content and happy in his otherwise pretty nifty surroundings, and yet, at some level, it keeps him going, looking for that palm-covered beach, that ticket on a spaceship, or the gilt boardroom that will never come. Or will they?
Dream on, dissatisfied man.
