About 5 years ago I couldn’t think of anything to give my husband for Valentine’s day. This is not an unusual situation at holidays- my husband is happy with what he has as long as it works. In order to get him something he really wants, you have to find something that is broken that he hasn’t replaced yet.
I was in Starbucks (someone must have given me a gift card- that’s the only reason I ever go in there) and I saw a bag of Guatemalan coffee. We’d had a lovely vacation in Guatemala a year or two before, and really enjoyed the coffee plantation tour there. Perfect- a pound of memory coffee. I plunked it on the counter and tried not to wince at the price. I had to buy a bean grinder too- because it was whole bean, of course.
He was delighted- sort of. More so than the heart boxer shorts I’d given him the year before. The coffee was good. Really good. We ground and happily drank all of it. And then we couldn’t go back. The old coffee? It was awful. We had no idea how awful till we tried the good stuff. And guess what? Our small town grocery store didn’t have any good stuff. I had to drive 30 minutes to get anything comparable. So we are still doing that- 5 years later. Most expensive Valentines Day gift ever.
The really sad thing is, we are LESS happy than we were before. Before the Valentine’s gift, we were happy with all coffee. We never complained about the coffee in hotels- we thought it was fine. Now we are only happy with expensive coffee. And even though it tastes better, we hate grinding coffee. We never had to do that when we bought it in a plastic container at the grocery store. So when someone wants to “teach us” to appreciate fine wine or whiskey, we politely refuse- we’re good.
The scientific name for this is hedonic adaptation. If you treat yourself to something regularly, it becomes the new normal-your new baseline- your new minimum level for happiness. So after your luxury becomes”normal” it doesn’t make you happier, but anything less makes you LESS happy. The solution is to treat yourself without making it the new normal. Do it occasionally. So have Middleton’s whiskey occasionally, but don’t make it so that you’re unhappy without it. Or at least think about it before you create a new baseline for your happiness. What are YOU thinking about upgrading to?
