Part 2: The Hedonic Treadmill asks, “What lack I yet?”

Tagline: The problem isn’t what I lack. The problem is what still has me.

Podcast Coming Soon

Today we continue our reflection on the two hungers that keep the soul running. In Part A, we explored the hunger for applause – the desire to be seen, praised, admired, affirmed, and told that we matter. In this essay, we turn toward the second hunger: the hunger for more.

More status.
More proof.
More comfort.
More security.
More possessions.
More evidence that we are finally enough.

The Hunger for More

The question posed by the rich young man to Jesus frequently roams through my mind and continues to resonate in this modern time:

“What lack I yet?”

It’s a dangerous question.

Not because the question is wrong. It may be one of the most honest questions a person can ask. It can be a holy question when it’s asked from the right place.

What remains unfinished in me?
What attachment still governs me?
What part of Base Camp isn’t free?
What is the next faithful step toward wholeness?

Asked that way, “What lack I yet?” is a doorway into formation.

But the same question can be bent by comparison. It can be taken over by scarcity, ambition, insecurity, and the old need to prove we are enough.

What lack I yet so I can keep up?
What lack I yet so I can stay ahead?
What lack I yet so I can feel successful, secure, admired, or complete?
What lack I yet so no one can look at my life and find it wanting?

That is the Hedonic Treadmill. It’s the hunger for more that follows every meal.

It begins with the quiet belief that peace is located just beyond the next acquisition. One more achievement. One more title. One more completed project. One more cleared acre. One more improved system. One more successful harvest. One more finished house. One more book written. One more proof that the life I am living is worthy.

But “more” is a strange food. It gives energy for a while. Then it leaves the soul hungry again.

Morning Walks

Most mornings now, I walk a quiet country road in Northern Alabama.

Carleigh, my faithful dog, usually comes with me. The road bends between giant oak and maple trees, blackberry vines, pasture edges, and thick summer vegetation. Cows and calves graze in the fields. Birds sing from the tree line. Squirrels chatter and scold from branches overhead.

Its a simple walk. Or at least it should be. If I am not careful, my mind slips back into the old executive current.

What do I need to accomplish today?
What’s on the calendar?
Did I check email?
Did anyone send a message overnight?
What task is slipping?
What should I be managing, improving, measuring, producing, or optimizing?

The body is walking a country road, but the mind is already back inside an office.

That is one of the surprises of this season of life.

You can leave the executive role and still carry the executive habit energy. You can step away from organizational leadership and still turn chickens, gardens, grandchildren, writing, and even a morning walk into projects to be measured and improved.

Tyler and the Clover

One morning my youngest granddaughter Tyler came with me.

We walked at what I first called a toddler’s pace, though that phrase needs some honesty. Tyler isn’t a tiny spiritual master floating through the world in perfect mindfulness. She is nearly two years old. She has very little sense of ownership. Much of what she sees, she assumes belongs to her. She has little sense of timing. What she wants, she wants when she wants it, whether you know what she wants or not. She can be impatient, loud, stubborn, and fully confident that whatever her brother or sister holds is immediately more desirable than what is already in her own hand. Like I said, she’s nearly two.

So, I’m not making a saint of her. But there are moments – especially outside – when her inner life seems wonderfully uncluttered.

On that walk, her small hand wrapped around my finger. We moved along the grass, past clover and garden beds. Suddenly she stopped with a gasp and pulled me downward. She pointed to a clover blossom where a large bumblebee was gathering nectar from each little floweret.

So, there we crouched. We watched the bee work. Finally, it lifted and flew away. We stood and took a few more steps. Then she stopped again and pulled me down with her.

Another clover.
Another bee.
Another gasp.
Another whole world.

Later, near the blueberry bushes, she grazed with delight. She carefully selected the dark blue berries and left the green ones. With each berry, she seemed newly amazed, as though the world had once again managed to produce a miracle right at mouth level.

That is presence.

Not purity.
Not perfection.
Presence.

Tyler hasn’t yet learned to turn every moment into evidence. She hasn’t learned to compare gardens, measure productivity, compete for status, calculate legacy, or ask whether the blueberry harvest proves anything about her worth. She can receive a berry as berry. A bee as bee. A bird as bird.

Adults have a harder time.

At some point, we learn to turn the walk into a plan, the garden into output, the house into arrival, the flock into a management system, the writing desk into a platform, and even family life into a quiet report card of usefulness.

That doesn’t mean building, producing, improving, organizing, accumulating, or optimizing are character cancers. They are not. A lazy soul can hide behind the language of simplicity just as easily as an ambitious soul can hide behind the language of stewardship.

Again, it comes back to motive.

Why am I building?
Why am I improving?
Why am I planting?
Why am I clearing?
Why am I writing?
Why am I teaching?
Why am I accumulating?
Why am I carrying this?

If the act is rooted in goodness, beauty, nourishment, service, responsibility, and love, then it can be part of formation. But if it’s rooted in comparison, display, insecurity, or the hunger to accumulate enough to prove that I am finally enough, then the act begins to sour.

The garden may still grow.
The house may still rise.
The chickens may still be fed.
The writing may still reach people.

But something in Base Camp has been pulled onto the treadmill.

Tyler isn’t on the treadmill, yet. What pulls us unconsciously onto that treadmill?

How We Climb Onto the Treadmill

That question leads me reflecting into my own story. How did I get on the treadmill?

I grew up inside a religious culture that strongly honored men and priesthood leadership. There was much good there – service, sacrifice, duty, family, scripture, community, moral seriousness. I don’t want to flatten the story into criticism. But in my young mind, worthiness and validation became connected to a ladder of visible religious status.

I remember my grandmother telling me more than once, often enough that it became seared into memory, “You will make a fine bishop one day.”

In that world, visible roles carried spiritual weight. Bishop. Stake president. General authority. Mission leader. Temple-worthy. Priesthood holder. The titles themselves became signs of worth in my imagination. I don’t want to minimize these good men’s influence on me and my family. Humble, good LDS Bishops have impacted my life for good throughout my youth.

But, I absorbed the message of status as self-worth. The treadmill began forming early.

I thought validation would come through creating the right resume: mission service, leadership callings, temple marriage, children, degrees, military achievement, professional success, and visible usefulness.

Many of those things were good. Some formed me. Some were sincere. Some were rooted in service and sacrifice.

But the hunger beneath them was not always free.

I served a faithful LDS mission in Eastern Canada and became a zone leader. This provided solid formation for the rest of my life. Internally however, it was still not enough.

I married, had children, earned degrees, served in church leadership, completed Officer Candidate School, Airborne School, and Jungle Warfare School, and began Special Forces training.

I started to feel valid. Worthy. Almost complete.

Then the structure cracked.

My first marriage ended in divorce. I temporarily lost the daily presence of my two sons. A severe parachute injury eventually ended my military hopes and any dream of earning the Special Forces tab.

Much of what I thought would give me fulfillment, validation, and worthiness was suddenly removed.

So, I climbed back onto other versions of the treadmill.

Education. Career. Leadership. Business. Church service. School and business leadership. Titles. Influence. More effort. More usefulness. More proof.

And worse, I tried to pull my children onto the treadmill with me. Our son Danny resisted it.

I wanted him to follow the validation pathway I had inherited: be a valid Mormon, serve a mission, go to the temple, walk the approved road, carry the right signs, make the right choices, become what the system recognized as worthy.

He refused.

At the time, I experienced his refusal as danger, rebellion, and loss. Looking back, I can see that I was pressing him toward a treadmill that had weakened me, while believing I was saving him. I lost his trust and presence for several years. Thankfully, he is now one of my most trusted friends and trail guides. That is grace.

But the memory still instructs me.

The treadmill does not only exhaust the person running on it. It can recruit that person into becoming an agent of the treadmill for others.

Parents can place children on it.

Churches can place children on it.

Schools can place children on it.

Organizations can place adults on it.

Cultures can place whole generations on it.

Run faster.
Earn more.
Achieve more.
Prove more.
Become more impressive.
Gather more evidence that you matter.

At one point, when it was time for a new bishop to be called in our ward, the treadmill spirit in me was running hard. I believed it would be me. Why wouldn’t it be? I had served, performed, worked, led, sacrificed, and checked the visible boxes. My grandmother’s old prophecy rose again: “You will make a fine bishop one day.”

Finally, I thought, I would be valid.

When I learned that my prior divorce disqualified me from being chosen, I was disheartened.

Then, dutifully, I climbed back onto the treadmill and kept serving. That is the strange bondage of the treadmill. Even when it wounds you, you may keep running because you still believe it holds the key to self-worth.

Years later, after job loss, consulting work, lost homes, rebuilding, and founding Paideia Academies, I began to recognize the treadmill, though I didn’t yet have a name for it. I could feel the weight of trying to accumulate more influence, more power, more validation from others, or perhaps simply validation from the mirror.

In 2015, I decided to get off that treadmill. I didn’t need permission. I needed will.

Looking back, I can see the paradigm that had been planted in my spirit: if I ran fast enough, served enough, accumulated enough, achieved enough, and held enough titles, eventually I would be valid.

That is the lie of the Hedonic Treadmill. It promises arrival but trains appetite.

The Question That Reveals Attachment

A rich young man came to Jesus and asked, “What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” Jesus answered him simply: keep the commandments. The young man responded that he had kept them from his youth.

Then came the piercing question from the heart of the young man:

“What lack I yet?”

It’s hard not to admire the question. He wasn’t careless. He wasn’t morally indifferent. He wanted to know what remained. Jesus didn’t tell him to add another credential, another religious performance, another possession, another public achievement, or another symbol of worth. He placed his finger on the attachment.

Go.
Sell.
Give.
Come.
Follow.

The young man went away sorrowful because he had great possessions.

That sorrow tells the truth.

He didn’t simply have possessions. His possessions had some claim on him. They were not only items in his keeping. They had become part of the architecture of his identity, safety, status, and imagined completeness.

He couldn’t pass through the narrow gates of release while carrying the identity his possessions had given him.

That is where the Hedonic Treadmill becomes a wilderness condition.

It convinces the soul that lack is always external. If I only had more of this, then I would be whole. If I only gained that, then I would be secure. If I only finished this project, reached this level, earned this recognition, built this home, cleared this land, had this financial cushion, grew this platform, or left this legacy – then I could rest.

But Jesus didn’t answer, “Add one more thing.” He answered, “Release what has you.”

The Buddha would recognize the same problem.

The language would be different, but the diagnosis would be close. The issue is craving. Attachment. The mind that keeps manufacturing lack even when the outer life is full. The belief that peace can be secured by possession, comparison, comfort, status, or control.

Neither Jesus, nor the Buddha calls us to abandon responsibility.

Non-attachment isn’t neglect. It’s freedom. It’s not walking away from love. It’s walking away from bondage.

• Can I lead without needing leadership to validate my importance?
• Can I tend the garden without needing the garden to define me?
• Can I build the house without asking the house to complete me?
• Can I care for the chickens without needing my systems to prove my competence?
• Can I write without needing the writing to secure my importance?
• Can I teach grandchildren without needing the role to validate my legacy?

That is the harder work.

A Quiet Life Isn’t Automatically a Free Life

In this new phase of life, I am standing on a threshold between the busy world of executive leadership and a quieter life of husband, father, grandfather, gardener, writer, keeper of chickens and backpacker.

But a quiet life isn’t automatically a free life. The treadmill can follow a man into the country and onto the trail. It can move from the boardroom to the garden bed. From the organizational chart to the chicken coop. From strategic planning to blueberry rows. From leadership meetings to the barndominium. From staff development to piano lessons with grandchildren.

The scenery changes. The inner hunger may not.

When I imagined a quieter life, I think I imagined simplicity would come with the zip code. A rural road, family nearby, gardens, chickens, trees, cows in the pasture, a new home under construction, grandchildren running across the land.

But quiet isn’t the same as freedom. A person can bring an unquiet soul into a quiet place and immediately begin improving everything in sight.

I created new gardens. I planted blueberry bushes and blackberry vines. I expanded our usable acreage by clearing more land. I took responsibility for the neighbor farmer’s hen house. I revised the watering system and the feeding system to make them more reliable. I have taken on the Greybeard writing project. I am giving piano lessons to Zoey and Jacob.

None of these are wrong. In fact, all of them can be good.

The garden can nourish body, mind, heart, and spirit. The land-clearing can recover beauty and safety. The hen house can become a place of service, rhythm, and responsibility. The writing can become legacy, service, clarity, and healing. Piano lessons can become love, patience, delight, and shared practice.

But the Hedonic Treadmill is subtle. It doesn’t always ask me to do or accumulate bad things. It asks me to do good or accumulate things for the wrong reason.

When Good Things Become Proof

I can feel it in the garden.

I plant for nourishment. I plant for beauty. I intentionally align the beds and want the space to be pleasing to the eye. I plant for legacy, hoping my grandchildren will know the feel of soil in their hands and remember the taste of snap peas, blueberries, tomatoes, and whatever else the earth gives us. I plant because I love learning how things grow.

But even in the garden, motive can sour. It happens when the language changes.

Look what I planted.
Look at my garden.
Look how my plants are growing.
Look what I produced.

When I, my, me, and mine begin taking over the sentence, I can smell the motive turning.

And this is why the rich young man’s question returns again and again to my soul and matters so deeply.

What lack I yet?

Responsibility Without Applause

Now, in this quiet farm life, the same question returns in more comfortable clothes. It comes while I work in the hen house.

Graciously, our neighbor permitted me to take over care of his chickens: twenty-seven hens and four roosters. I felt a quiet joy taking responsibility for that space – not a victorious joy, not a celebratory joy, but a grateful one. There is something grounding about entering the hen house in the morning, hearing the clucks, gathering eggs, checking water, and noticing the flock.

One fluffy hen is often still in her box when I arrive. Her wings and breast feathers fill the nest. She chortles and pleads as though asking me to leave some eggs to hatch.

“Good morning, momma hen,” I say. “How many eggs this morning? I know you want to keep them, but this isn’t a place to become a momma. Thank you for laying these eggs. We will enjoy them.”

Then I carefully reach under her and gather the eggs while she complains.

There is a simple holiness in that kind of daily work.

But even there, the seeds rise.

I noticed the old watering system was a plastic kiddie pool where the chickens drank from water that easily became dirty and had to be refilled every few days. The feeding system spilled feed across the floor. So, I improved the systems. I built a better watering system and feeding system, reliable enough that the water lasts roughly three weeks and the feed roughly two.

That work was for care. Reliability. Stewardship. Efficiency.

But also, if I am honest, I enjoy improving systems. I see something wobbly and want to make it smooth. I see inefficiency and want to correct it. That ability has served me well in leadership, schools, business, and life.

But the seed of pride can sprout there too.

Does no one see this amazing watering system?
Does no one notice how many eggs I have brought the family?
Does no one appreciate how much better this works now?

When those weed-seed thoughts rise, I see them, smile at them, and tell them, “I’m not watering you today.”

The chickens don’t need me to be impressive.

They need clean water.
They need food.
They need presence.

They need me to understand that they don’t exist to validate my hunger for more achievement.

I learned that one morning when the large white rooster attacked me from behind. Suddenly pain shot into the back of my calf. Something was jackhammering my knee. I looked down and saw him raking my calf with his spurs and rapidly striking at my knee. Then a smaller banty rooster charged in and attacked the big rooster, giving me just enough time to escape.

I limped back to the house bleeding and in pain. For a moment, I considered rooster and dumplings for dinner, though I suspected he would be too tough even for that.

Then the Stoic question came:

What is in my control? I could not control the rooster’s instincts. I could control my preparation, my posture, and my ability to choose my response.

The next day, I returned with a small squirt bottle filled with water. The rooster attacked. I stood my ground and sprayed him in the face repeatedly while firmly saying,

“Back. Back. Back.”

He backed away, shaking his head in confusion. Rooster Cogburn and I now have an understanding. If he comes near me with murder in his heart, he gets sprayed in the face.

I don’t own that space – it isn’t my validation-station to prove my worth. I have influence within the space. The chickens have small chicken brains and strong chicken instincts. They cannot join with me to impress others by my clever systems. They cannot be coerced into admiration. They simply live, eat, drink, scratch, lay, fuss, attack, retreat, and gather when the scratch is thrown.

They are a daily school in responsibility without applause.

And the eggs become more than output. They connect generations. My granddaughter Zoey has learned to make deviled eggs with her mother, carrying forward a cherished memory of her grandmother. I take my grandson Jake with me to deliver eggs to the senior center and to an elderly neighbor and her granddaughter.

That is stewardship. Not accumulation. The difference matters.

Piano lessons with Zoey and Jacob ask a similar question.

What am I teaching them beyond piano?

Am I teaching performance, or love of the deed?
Am I teaching them to enjoy applause without becoming dependent on it?
Am I teaching practice without pressure?
Am I present with them, or am I measuring my usefulness through their progress?

I ask them sometimes why they want to learn to play. Of course, they enjoy the stickers in their practice book and the enthusiastic applause from the adults in their lives. Children do. Adults do too. But I want them to learn something deeper: the deed itself must become lovable. Practice must be worth doing even when no one claps. Music must be more than performance. It must become a way of attending to beauty.

That is the lesson I am still learning.

What Has Me?

So, I return to the rich young man.

What would Jesus place his finger on in me? The answer is uncomfortable.

Worldly titles still have some hold: PhD, business leader, Airborne, veteran. Husband, father, grandfather are dearer and holier, but even sacred roles can become identity possessions if I am not careful.

It will stir sorrow in me when it’s time to release the titles of PhD and business executive completely. I can feel that. It tells me something. The sorrow points to attachment.

If Jesus said, “Come, follow me,” what would I first want to finish, secure, build, organize, or protect?

Would I walk away sorrowful? That question deserves more than a quick answer.

Because the issue isn’t whether education, service, military experience, business leadership, family, home, land, gardens, chickens, and writing are good. Many of them are deeply good.

The question is whether they are free from the treadmill.

Do I hold them in stewardship, or do they hold me in identity?

The Buddha’s language of non-attachment helps here. Non-attachment isn’t abandonment. It’s freedom. It doesn’t require me to neglect the garden, reject the house, stop writing, abandon the chickens, or refuse to teach the grandchildren.

It asks whether I can love without grasping.

Build without becoming possessed by the building.
Improve without needing improvement to prove competence.
Serve without converting service into status.
Produce without making output into identity.
Teach without needing the role to validate legacy.
Hold titles without asking them to hold my worth.

This is where enough begins.

Enough isn’t laziness. Enough isn’t lack of ambition. Enough isn’t quitting the work of stewardship. Enough is the condition of a soul that can receive without grasping and build without bondage.

Enough asks a different question:

What is already rich here?

The answer is everywhere.

A toddler gasping at a bee in clover.
Blueberries darkening on the bush.
Grandchildren with dirt on their hands.
A hen chortling over eggs.
A rooster who teaches boundaries better than a leadership seminar.
A fenceline cleared enough to see pasture again.
A house not finished, but already becoming home.
A writing desk where thoughts become clearer.
A piano bench where small fingers learn to find notes.
A country road where Carleigh reminds me that presence isn’t performance.

What lack I yet? Perhaps less than I think.

Perhaps the better question isn’t: What do I still need before I can be at peace?

Perhaps the better question is: What do I need to release before I can be at peace?

The problem isn’t what I lack. The problem is what still has me. That is the invitation of this second treadmill. Part A asked whether the deed could survive invisibility. Part B asks whether the soul can survive abundance without being owned by it. The hunger for applause says, “Who saw me?” The hunger for more says, “What lack I yet?”

Base Camp answers:

Return. Look carefully. Name the attachment without shame.
Water the seeds of peace, contentment, love, stewardship, and freedom.

Let the weed seeds go dry.

Build what is good.
Plant what nourishes.
Clear what chokes.
Feed what depends on you.
Teach who is before you.
Write what may help someone beyond you.

But don’t ask any of it to make you finally enough. You are not free because you have accumulated enough proof. You become free when you can receive what is already given, release what has begun to own you, and take the next faithful step without needing more to be at peace.

Back to the Clover

And perhaps that is why Tyler’s little hand around my finger stays with me. She didn’t stop at the clover because it added anything to her status. She didn’t crouch beside the bumblebee because it proved her worth. She didn’t reach for the blueberry because it completed an identity. She simply received what was there.

A clover.
A bee.
A berry.
A morning walk with grandpa.

Nothing needed to be upgraded before wonder could enter. Nothing needed to be possessed before joy could rise. Nothing needed to be compared before the moment became enough.

Maybe that is one way Base Camp begins to heal from the hunger for more. Not by abandoning the garden, the house, the chickens, the work, the writing, or the children we teach, but by learning again how to kneel beside one small clover without needing it to become evidence of anything.

What lack I yet? Perhaps, in that moment, less than I think.

Internal Practice — What Lack I Yet?

A Base Camp practice for noticing the hunger for more and asking what needs to be released before peace can return.

Step 0 — Enter Base Camp: Stop, Calm, Rest, Heal

Stop

Sit down or stand still. Put the phone away and out of sight.

Begin by focusing on the muscles in the crown of your head, down through your forehead. Intentionally see them, feel them release and soften. Soften the muscles between your eyebrows and feel the release of tension through your facial muscles. Next move to the muscles in your jaw. Greet them, notice them, feel them relax and soften.

Now focus your attention on your shoulders and feel them loosen and fall away. Feel the strain move down through your arms and into your hands.

Open your hands and feel the tension slip through your fingertips.

Quietly say:

“I am enough.”

“I don’t need more before I can return.”

Calm

Take five slow breaths.

Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am enough.
Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am enough.
Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am enough.
Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am enough.
Breathing in I am calm, breathing out I am enough.

Rest

Let the breath become natural.

Notice any hunger for more: more recognition, more comfort, more security, more control, more possessions, more influence, more proof.

Don’t shame it.

Simply name it:

“This is the hunger for more ___________” and name it.

Heal

Place a hand on your chest or belly, breathe in deeply and release the breath slowly with this thought:

“The problem may not be what I lack. The problem may be what still has me.”

Then, listen to the reflection of the inner self.

Reflection

Ask slowly:

What do I still believe I lack before I can be at peace?

Then ask:

Is this a holy question or a comparison question?

If its holy, it may point toward formation:

What remains unfinished in me?
What attachment still governs me?
What part of Base Camp isn’t free?

If its comparison, it may point toward the treadmill:

What lack I yet so I can keep up?
What lack I yet so I can stay ahead?
What lack I yet so I can feel successful, secure, admired, or complete?

One Small Action

Choose one act of release this week.

Let one comparison go unnamed.
Delay one purchase.
Stop checking one metric.
Receive one ordinary gift without turning it into output.
Finish one chore without needing recognition.
Leave one thing unimproved for a day.
Give something away.
Practice gratitude before planning the next improvement.

Trail Marker

This week, when I ask, “What lack I yet?” I will listen carefully.

If the answer points outward toward comparison, status, possession, or proof, I will return to Base Camp.

If the answer points inward toward release, non-attachment, love, stewardship, and freedom, I will take the next small step.

Final Prayer of Pure Intention

Let me walk for the deed, not the witness.
Let me receive the trail’s honesty without complaint.
Let me notice hunger without obeying it.
Let me see what I cling to, without shame.

Let me ask, “what lack I yet” and listen with a humble heart.
Let me return to Base Camp without baggage.
Let me learn something for the next trek.

If this reflection helped you name something in your own life, consider sharing it with someone who may be walking through a similar wilderness. Not as advice. Not as correction. Simply as a trail marker.

You can share the post, send it to a friend, or pass it along with one question:

“What do I need to release before I can be at peace?”

Small reflections shared at the right time can become guides for someone else’s next step.

Until next time—be kind to yourself, return to Base Camp, and learn something for the next trek.