The Body That Stops Itself

VZ Lens

From the VZ perspective, this topic matters only when translated into execution architecture. In 1971, Brickman demonstrated that lottery winners are just as happy six months later as they were before. Happiness does not accumulate—the body realizes this sooner than the mind. The real leverage is in explicit sequencing, ownership, and measurable iteration.

TL;DR

Desire and joy are not the same thing—yet people can confuse the two for decades. The body sometimes knows more than the mind: when it pauses, it isn’t punishing you, but reminding you. Life doesn’t happen at the finish line, but in the pauses between breaths—and neither a book nor a meditation app can teach you this difference; only the silence experienced firsthand.

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Finnish sauna, winter evening

I sit on the heated bench, the air burning my lungs. The stones in the stove glow, the heat rippling before my eyes. Through the window I see the dark forest, the silence of the snow. My body empties out, beads of sweat trickling down my back. I cannot move, nor do I want to. My heartbeat is slow and deep. My thoughts disappear; I feel only the heat on my skin, the view through the cold glass. Here, where the body comes to a standstill, my breath slows as well. I lack nothing, I expect nothing. In the silence, I feel something old and forgotten awakening—not desire, not joy, just the raw, glowing weight of presence.

City Park at Dusk

Desire and joy are not the same, yet people can confuse the two for decades. Research on the hedonic treadmill proves it: our happiness levels return to baseline after every fulfillment. The body, however, understands this sooner than the mind—according to Antonio Damasio and his somatic markers, bodily signals precede conscious decision-making.

I’ve been walking a lot lately. I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps because when I’m in motion, I don’t have to make decisions. The body leads, the mind follows, and in the process, some inner space clears.

The City Park enters a peculiar state at such times. Light creeps slowly beneath the trees, and the air seems to come from another layer of time—not the everyday early-March air of Budapest, but something denser, something more patient. The runners are still here, but they’re slowing down. Those sitting on the benches aren’t on the phone; they’re just looking. Every evening is a little the same, a little different. And as I walk the streets, I sometimes watch how the light falls on the trees. The leaves want nothing. They simply are.

This is the moment when desire and joy part ways. And when one first understands that the two words do not mean the same thing.

Why doesn’t happiness accumulate?

I used to think that desire and joy were one and the same. That what I want will bring me joy. That what I love, I will come to want. But the body teaches otherwise.

There is a term for this in psychology: hedonic treadmill. The concept was introduced by Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell in 1971, and the basic idea is simple but brutal: a person’s level of happiness returns to a baseline in the long run, regardless of what positive or negative events they experience. You win the lottery—six months later, you’re just as satisfied as you were before. You lose something that was important—six months later, you adapt.

Buddhist psychology has known this for two thousand five hundred years. Dukkha—often translated as “suffering,” but more accurately described as “unsatisfactoriness” or “dissatisfaction”—is not about life being bad. It is about the nature of desire being reproductive. Behind every fulfilled desire lies another. The wheel of samsara does not turn because someone is turning it—it turns because desire itself is the turning.

It’s like a self-propelled machine. Behind every goal lies another goal. Behind every “once I have that,” there’s another “once I have that.” And all the while, you think you’re moving somewhere, when in fact you’re just going in circles—like a clock hand that doesn’t realize it has already gone all the way around.

[!note] The essence of the hedonistic treadmill The essence of the hedonistic treadmill isn’t that one can’t be happy—but that happiness doesn’t accumulate. It doesn’t build upon itself. It doesn’t pile up. It isn’t a bank account. You have to rediscover it in every moment.

The Body That Gives Back

A good few years ago, my body stopped me. It didn’t ask for my permission. There was no tact, no timing. It simply refused to obey.

At first, I thought it was betraying me. I thought it was letting me down—just when I needed to perform at my best. But it only wanted to give me back something I had long lost: the difference between what I chase and what I already possess.

Antonio Damasio—the Portuguese-American neuroscientist and professor at the University of Southern California—described this mechanism as the somatic markers. The essence of the theory is that the body is not a passive executor, but an active decision-maker. Internal organs, the skin, and muscles constantly send signals to the brain—and these signals precede conscious thought. Your heart racing, your stomach tightening, the tension in the back of your neck are not consequences of the decision, but precursors.

Damasio’s research has shown that people who, due to damage to their prefrontal cortex, cannot perceive these bodily signals make disastrous decisions—even when their intelligence, memory, and logical abilities are fully intact. Without the body, the mind is blind.

There, in that hospital bed, where my body uttered its first “no,” I understood this difference for the first time in real life. There is a voice in the brain that always says: “more, just a little more, it’s not enough yet.” And there is another, much quieter one, whispering: “but it’s already here.”

One is desire. The other is joy.

Two languages, one listening

Desire and joy are not enemies. They are two separate languages.

	Desire	Joy
Direction	Forward	Downward, inward
Voice	Speaks — “more, just a little more”	Listens — “it’s already here”
Movement	Drives, rushes, plans	Calms, arrives
Relationship to time	Lives in the future	Happens in the present
What it teaches	To seek	To stay
Nature	Self-regenerating — behind every goal lies another	Recurring — like breathing

One drives, the other listens. Desire is movement, joy is stillness. And the two rarely meet — because desire, by definition, is what is not, while joy is what is.

For a long time, I believed that wanting was what gave meaning to my days. That movement was proof that I was alive. But then I realized that this wanting is often just an escape. Desire always looks outward and never finds what it seeks—because in the meantime, it rewrites the void it wants to fill.

What happens when the desire falls silent?

Then suddenly a moment comes—sometimes physical, sometimes mental, sometimes both at once—when something stops. Not to deprive you, but to show you: what you were looking for is already here.

Joy is not found in the goal. Joy resides in the moment when the goal ceases to exist. In that which is in no hurry to go anywhere. In that moment when, for the first time, the world expects nothing from you, and you expect nothing from it.

Joy always arrives when desire falls silent. But to reach this point, desire must first be exhausted. It must be lived out, let go of, allowed to run its course until it is spent. Only then does silence come—and this silence is not a void, but a state of fulfillment.

Buddhists call this upekkha—equanimity, which is not indifference, but the highest form of attention. It is not a lack of emotions, but the ability to be present without wanting to add or take anything away from the moment. In Stoic philosophy, apatheia is a similar concept: not insensitivity, but freedom from passions—the state in which one does not experience the world through one’s reactions.

[!tip] The translation of desire and joy Desire teaches us to seek. Joy teaches us to stay. And perhaps human life is nothing more than a slow learning process on how to translate one into the other. So that when we say, I want, we actually mean: I love.

The Unattainable

I often sit on a bench and watch the leaves move in the wind. Nothing special, yet everything is there. The movement, the light, the air. The world wants nothing, only to be. And I, too, have been searching for something like that lately: to be. Not more, not better, not smarter. Just exactly what is.

The human mind is a strange construct: it names everything so it can possess it. Yet possession always signifies a lack in the present. If you want to name something, you’ve already lost it. Joy, on the other hand, is nameless. Joy doesn’t say, “This is joy.” It just happens.

It took me many years to understand: when we say I want, what we really mean is I love. Because wanting always presupposes a lack—that something is missing and must be acquired. Love, however, starts from presence—from what is already there and is enough.

The city breathes slowly at this hour, at dusk. The light is no longer working; it simply remains. The shadows of the trees stretch out, as if they cannot decide whether they still belong to the earth. Every arrival is the beginning of a new departure. Joy is not constant, only recurring—like breathing.

And perhaps this is the greatest gift: that it cannot be possessed. Only rediscovered.

Key Takeaways

• Desire and joy are not the same—desire lives in the future and reproduces itself; joy happens in the present and does not accumulate
• The body precedes thought — Damasio’s somatic markers show that bodily signals are not the consequences of a decision, but its precursors; the body “knows” before the mind “thinks”
• The hedonic treadmill is not a punishment — it is a natural adaptive mechanism, but once recognized, we need not blindly obey it
• Joy arrives when desire falls silent — this is not passivity, but the most active form of presence

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between desire and joy according to psychology?

According to research on the hedonic treadmill, desire is adaptive—after every fulfillment, it returns to its baseline and generates new goals. Pleasure, on the other hand, is not cumulative: it cannot be built up or accumulated; it must be rediscovered in every moment. Buddhist psychology described this pattern two thousand five hundred years ago: dukkha is not suffering, but insatiability—the self-perpetuating nature of desire.

What do somatic markers mean, and why are they important?

According to Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, the body constantly sends signals to the brain—changes in heart rate, muscle tension, stomach tightness—that precede conscious decision-making. People who lose these bodily signals due to brain injury make disastrous decisions even while retaining their intelligence. The body is not a passive executor: it is an active decision-maker.

How can one escape the hedonistic treadmill?

One must not escape it—one must recognize it. The Buddhist upekkha (equanimity) and the Stoic apatheia (freedom from passions) do not mean the suppression of emotions, but rather the ability to be present without wanting to add anything to the moment. In practice, this means learning to distinguish between what we chase and what we already possess—and realizing that the gap between the two is much smaller than we might think.

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Related Thoughts

• AI Brain Fry: This Is Not Burnout — when the structure of attention collapses
• The Algorithm of Presence — at the boundary between consciousness and technology
• The Architecture of Thought — how what we call thinking is constructed

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Zoltán Varga - LinkedIn
Neural • Knowledge Systems Architect | Enterprise RAG architect
PKM • AI Ecosystems | Neural Awareness • Consciousness & Leadership
Desire compiles. Joy just runs.

Strategic Synthesis

• Convert the main claim into one concrete 30-day execution commitment.
• Track trust and quality signals weekly to validate whether the change is working.
• Iterate in small cycles so learning compounds without operational noise.