Happiness Buffet
Fulfillment or Contentment
which would you rather have?
Ok so that’s not the real question but I think I can possibly help my fellow ENFPs explain their desire for more from their friends in a creative way I just thought up. Feel free to add your own spin or critique kindly.
Think of fulfillment as a buffet of choices. Each dish is a different kind of experience. The greater the availability, the higher your eudaimonic happiness is because you can pursue fulfilling avenues to your hearts content. So, contentment is the ability to choose a couple dishes until you‘re satisfied.
With friends, there’s a distinct difference I’ve noticed between those who fill me up and those who don’t, even if I feel like it’s still possible for them to in time. The friends I want for my life have that same hunger to eat from a large buffet. The best part is we choose to share from the same spread and have a wonderful time dining through a full course meal. Every day could be different and whether it’s the simple pleasures of a coffee break or the high highs of mountain hike bentos, they would choose the same dish. Our buffets don’t have to be perfectly aligned. They’ll eat their preferred dishes from time to time that I wouldn’t try, but they wouldn’t limit their menu.
With normal friends, not just casual but close too, they seem to operate from that socialized perspective of this is how friendship works and things should happen gradually. It feels like they’ve chosen to shorten the size of their buffet menu. None of the dishes are bad per se, but if we’re eating from the same table, I can’t share some of my favorite dishes with them. The things that I dream of eating that keep me salivating. I want to enjoy these dishes with them and I know they’d be down to eat them two, but they don’t notice when I setup smaller bites on a side plate. They don’t see what it could lead to. Their menu is capped at the end of the table and I just wanna ask them why do they keep their cook hired? Haven’t I tantalized their palette for bold new experiences? Was all they ever wanted just a nibble of the good stuff? All they have to do is hire a better cook and a world of new flavors opens before their eyes and nostrils. The aroma ever so sweet.
Now what I struggle with is explaining this to my friends. They seem so carried away with living a normal life that I see how much potential they’re leaving on the table. It’s like the buffet table extends far past what they would normally select, but that part of the table is blank because no one told the chef to make anything. It’s out of sight and out of mind, except my mind which has felt tortured by this mental exercise.
I want to show people what is possible to order and i’d love to find those friends who eat at similar tables to me, but it’s just so taxing to keep trying for people who honestly are giving me a buzzkill even if they don’t know it. They’re not bad people and I’m not angry at them but it just always feels like I give the most whether that’s in effort to be a great friend or what i sacrifice to give them a great experience.
I’m still pretty young. I don’t want to give up on the notion of real friends for casual relationships and I’m willing to do the work for the people who are worth it. I love and enjoy making people’s days brighter but ye the buzzkill feeling I have from not finding any people who do it like I do or would do it for me might just make me depressed for real one day.
People keep saying they want better friends and complaining that they cant find that but are they truly asking to eat from a better table, one that drives them to new flavor packed heights?
So my fellow experienced ENFPs, I have three options. 1) I can keep trying in general with people. 2) I can be highly selective of who I bring to my table. 3) Or I can just give up on trying and use the introvert tactic of friends find you and maybe I’ll actually meet someone like me out in the wild. That’s what I’ve been debating and I feel like the world is telling me to give up on option 1 which was my default, but whether I keep trying or give it up, both routes cutoff a sense of fulfillment through relational purpose I had. If I do try then people act as a buzzkill. If I stop trying, I give up my dreams of having a full table for that full course meal. It’s a crime of scarcity for what truly inspires me.