The More You Seek Novelty, the Less You’ll Value Consistency
Newness, once it’s no longer new, grows stale. In your attempts to maintain newness past its expiration, you’re proving to yourself that you can only chase, never have.
There’s only so much newness you can achieve. At a certain point, the newness will have to give way to consistency. Consistency is what maintains your achievements, but within a growth-oriented mindset, consistency loses its value. Without consistency, the novelty you’re seeking is fleeting and without a sturdy foundation.
Contemporary culture encourages the chasing of novelty because it’s believed that the opposite is stagnancy. You might feel the pressure to always be doing or achieving more as a way to prove that you aren’t in some way less. Maybe it’s within the realm of career or even interpersonal relationships—more is always seen as better, yet more is rarely what makes you feel better once you’ve attained it. Ironically, the more you chase and ultimately achieve, the less purposeful your actions begin to seem. What’s the point, you might think, if all I’m ever doing is pushing the boulder up the mountain only to watch it roll back down again?
Now, I get it, the point of life is the act of trying, over and over again, not necessarily getting. If we imagine Sisyphus happy, we’d envision him watching that boulder roll back down with a smile on his face, knowing that he’s been given his purpose yet again. However, I wanted to explore another facet of the concept of purpose, which I don’t think is discussed enough: consistency. More specifically, sitting with what you’ve achieved and trying to keep it where it is—nothing more, nothing less. A kind of balance, essentially.
We know what the opposite ends of this spectrum look like, but rarely are we encouraged to find purpose and enjoyment right in the middle. If success is on one end and failure is on the other, what would it look like to find joy and purpose in being neither at the beginning of the journey or the end of it? This is something I struggle to understand and embody because I’ve only ever been encouraged to look at success as the ultimate goal and failure as an inevitability on the way there. But what about the in-between?
A harsh truth I’ve had to come to terms with as I’ve grown older and (hopefully) wiser is that the more you seek novelty, the less you’ll value consistency. Consistency will feel like stagnancy, rather than being the very thing you truly desire. You might think what you desire is the high of success, but that high can only exist momentarily. Once you hit the peak, you will experience an inevitable drop in dopamine, urging you to move on to another dopamine-inducing goal until you eventually reach that, and the cycle continues. While there’s nothing objectively wrong with this process—it’s part of what makes life enjoyable—it shouldn’t be the only thing you value when you consider your ultimate purpose or intention.
If you were to think of this in terms of a relationship, the point isn’t to get the relationship, but rather to sustain it so that you can experience the benefits of it over time. If you were to approach dating with the same novelty mindset we’re encouraged to approach other goals, you’d be working to “win” someone over, and then losing interest the moment they agree to take the relationship to the next level, urging you to restart the process with someone else. This might be how many people approach relationships, leading to the avoidance that then makes them push others away, never quite getting what they want, but always on the hunt for it. What it ultimately comes down to is not valuing the element of consistency just as much as novelty. Neither is good in abundance, but when it comes to cultivating a life of alignment and contentment, consistency is an important factor. Without it, you’ll always be chasing, but never feeling satisfied with your achievement. Never allowing yourself to indulge in the pleasure of having because you only find purpose in the process of getting.
While enjoying the chase isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s important to recognize the part it might be playing in your general dissatisfaction if or when you experience it. If you’re always seeking novelty, then you’re not cultivating the skill of consistency. If you’re unable to practice sitting in the consistency of your goal achieved, you’ll never truly feel satiated and will always be on the hunt for something more, something that you think will finally silence the rumbling. But that can’t and won’t exist within the mentality of novelty. If you always seek novelty, consistency will feel like oppression. But consistency is what you’re truly seeking, you just don’t know it. You think that what you want is on the other side of success, but really, it’s hidden within the crevices of all the qualities that you’ve developed to keep what you’ve achieved. You don’t keep what you’ve achieved, though, because it doesn’t feel like how you thought it would, like what newness feels like.
Newness, once it’s no longer new, grows stale. In your attempts to maintain newness past its expiration, you’re proving to yourself that you can only chase, never have. You prove to yourself that the only value is in something that’s always eluding your grasp, never what can rest comfortably in your palm for close, adoring observation. You won’t be drawn to the partner who stays despite being “won” over; you’ll be drawn to the one who is always just slightly out of reach, always offering a challenge. You won’t feel connected to the version of you who feels safe enough to stop and look around at what they’ve built, only the one who moves with blinders on to stay focused on what’s always ahead. And the more you look ahead, the less you’ll care about what’s here and now. The less you’ll consider who you are right here and right now as good enough to revel in for longer than you think you should.
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