Why You’re Dissatisfied with Life

(With No Pat Answers on How to Stop It)

8 min readJun 8

You hear them all the time. From yourself. From other people. That slightly irritated, somewhat defeated, often frustrated and angry sigh of discontentment when things don’t go our way.

You might be aiming it at the checkout line or the queue at the bank. Someone else might be throwing it at their phone as they read the news or some contentious social media post. You hear it in coffee shops, hotel lobbies, waiting for a flight. Sometimes, it’s just being thrown out there because that’s how someone is feeling…maybe a lot of the time.

Common enough in life, this sigh of discontentment. Life can feel that way: that it just never quite pans out the way we wish it would, or that what we want from life, it just isn’t quite offering up. Who doesn’t know this feeling, right? Life dealing you a bad hand at most every turn.

You didn’t get the raise. Your company isn’t doing so well and layoffs are imminent. Your stocks went down, or your rent went up. You got a string of parking tickets or you just paid $70 for a meal at a restaurant which was barely passable. People are nuts, culture wars have gone too far. Racism, sexism, genderism, it’s on the rise. You can’t say anything any more without someone jumping down your throat.

The list goes on and on. The litany of reasons for being discontented and none-too pleased by the things in life which set you sideways goes on and on. Everyone has their own list, of course, but seems these days the list of dissatisfactions never seems to stop. Just when you think shit might be going your way, life hucks a flinty-edge stone at your shin and you end up on the short end of the proverbial stick again.

What’s to do but sigh in frustration, irritation, defeated anger?

As I said: The irritated sigh of discontentment.