“Stress eating? Yeah, I’ve been doing that too.”
I was talking with a friend yesterday about the strange ways we cope – with food, over-working, endless scrolling, shopping. Not because we need to do these things, but because they help us paper over something we don’t want to feel, something uncomfortable
My version is eating fig bars and dark chocolate. Or a splash of Diet Coke with a generous pour of orange seltzer. Nothing terrible on its own, except maybe the Diet Coke.
But I’m not reaching for these things because I’m hungry. I’m reaching because I want to feel something else: Safe. Secure. Loved. Pampered. Autonomous. Energized.
Then I started thinking … how often do we chase things in life not for what they are, but for what we hope they’ll make us feel? Sometimes it’s food. Sometimes it’s a number in a bank account. A job title. A political identity. A certain body weight.
But if we’re honest, those things are often stand-ins, proxies for something deeper – some unmet need or unspoken ache that’s still waiting to be seen. When we mistake the proxy for the source, we can end up chasing something forever, hoping it will finally make us feel whole.
The problem is, we live in a culture that rewards the chase. That tells us—again and again—that more is better. That happiness is just one achievement, one purchase, one performance away.
But that happiness rarely lasts. And so, we keep chasing.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow gave us a framework to think about human needs: from physical safety to emotional belonging to spiritual fulfillment. But real life isn’t a neat pyramid the way he displayed it. Our needs loop and overlap. We can feel deeply connected while living paycheck to paycheck. Or be emotionally starving while physically safe.
Still, when one of those needs goes unmet for too long, we often turn to stand-ins. We chase things that look like what we need but can’t quite satisfy us.
We chase money, not because we’re greedy, but because it seems to offer safety or respect. We cling to political identities, not because we agree with everything they say, but because they offer belonging. We overwork or over-give when we resent doing so because we’re trying to prove we’re worthy. These aren’t moral failings. They’re deeply human responses to deeply human needs.
And our brains don’t always help. We’re wired to seek what once made us feel good. Dopamine drives anticipation, not fulfillment. So we don’t keep doing something because it still works, we do it because it once gave us that hit of feeling better.
The sugar rush that soothed our sadness.
The paycheck that brought a moment of pride.
The applause that made us feel, just for a second, like we mattered.
We chase the memory of the high, that feeling of “I am enough. I matter.”
All of this – the chasing, the longing, the reaching for something that never quite satisfies – isn’t new. We’ve been telling stories about this chase for centuries, and maybe none more symbolically than the stories we tell about gold.
In the mid-1800s, gold was discovered in California. News spread fast and people came from everywhere, leaving families and farms, making an arduous journey to chase a dream. Not everyone expected to get rich, but many believed gold could bring them something else: freedom, dignity, a place in the world where they finally mattered.
But the truth was harder. For most, there was no gold. Just long days, broken bodies, and dreams that never quite landed. They weren’t chasing metal. They were chasing what gold symbolized. That’s the danger of the proxy. We fall in love with the symbol. And when it doesn’t give us what we hoped for, we often just chase harder.
And then there’s the story of King Midas. Midas wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. And at first, his wish seemed magical … until he tried to eat. Until he tried to hold his daughter. Until he realized he had surrounded himself with treasure he could no longer touch.
When the proxy becomes the goal, we lose what we were reaching for in the first place.
Love turns to gold. Nourishment turns to gold. Connection becomes cold and lifeless.
That’s not just Midas’s tragedy. It’s a cultural tragedy we’re all living in.
Because this isn’t just personal.
It’s the sea we swim in.
It’s one thing to recognize our own patterns. To see the gold we chase, the needs underneath, the ways we’ve tried to fill those quiet aches with things that glitter.
But it’s another thing entirely to realize—we live in a culture that feeds those patterns, even celebrates them. Profits from them. Turns them into algorithms, ad campaigns, political platforms, and pipelines of influence.
The air we breathe is saturated with the message that you’ll finally be safe, respected, admired, lovable—once you have a little more.
A little more money. A little more attention. A little more dominance over others.
We’re not just chasing—we’re being chased by messaging that’s designed to trigger our sense of lack. Studies have shown that people in consumer-driven cultures are more likely to experience anxiety and depression—not because they’re weak, but because they’re constantly told they’re not enough.
We live in a culture that profits from our unmet needs, a culture tells us we’ll finally be enough—once we buy this, lose weight, post that, win them over, shut them down.
Midas was a fictional man, now he’s become a metaphor for entire institutions—accumulating wealth at the expense of connection, compassion, and care.
But culture is made of people, and when people wake up—even quietly—cultures begin to shift.
We don’t have to scream. We don’t have to burn it all down.
But we can stop worshiping the gold, chasing what turns out to be fool’s gold.
We can start meeting real needs – our own and each other’s – in real ways.
So if you find yourself chasing—pause.
Ask: What do I really need? What am I really looking for here?
Not the thing, but the feeling underneath it.
Maybe it’s connection. Maybe it’s rest. Maybe it’s a sense of being seen without having to perform. To be accepted just as you are.
The world may try to sell you fool’s gold. But you can choose the real thing.
A moment of presence instead of performance.
A kind word offered when the world expects critique.
A love that doesn’t need perfection to be given and received.
A quiet knowing that you matter, without having to prove it.
That’s the kind of gold that remakes the world from the inside out.
The gold of Love.
Joni Miller, Ph.D., is a writer, researcher, spiritual coach, and speaker who uses her knowledge, education, and love of all things spiritual to help spiritual wanderers find a place they can call home, navigating by the light of Love. www.SpiritualGeography.net
Photo by Carolina Roepers: https://www.pexels.com/photo/closeup-and-selective-focus-photography-of-mushrooms-612403/
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