Look, I wasn’t going to write anything about Josh Duggar, but I saw yet another article this morning that triggered a train of thought, and so even though this article isn’t about him per se it sort of is. Kind of. Not really. It’s more about people in general who get stuck looking for a fix.

Generally when we talk about someone needing a ‘fix’ we are referring to an addiction. That is not the way I am using this term, although I suppose there could be some comparison drawn. I want to explore the phenomenon where an empty person frantically searches for something to give their life meaning and purpose, sometimes crashing from solution to failed solution and other times fixating on one thing that they think will solve their problems, pursuing it in a way that can look like addiction.

I get it. Life is big and scary and confusing, and we want solid ground and certain answers and safe paths. But ultimately the people who are grounded and secure don’t find that stability in something outside of themselves.

You can’t find it in food. You can’t find it in a career (although it may manifest in a vocation). You cannot find it in money or material possessions or the admiration of others.

In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her three friends set off on a quest for the one thing they believe they need to be whole. Dorothy wants a way home; the Cowardly Lion wants courage. The Scarecrow and Tin Man want a brain and a heart respectively. At the end of the story we discover that their journey was not  a trek toward an external goal, but rather a discovering of their inner selves. The Lion, as it turns out, already had courage within. The Scarecrow had brains that he just needed to use, and the Tin Man’s sawdust heart was as warm as his human one had been. And Dorothy? Dorothy had carried with her, ever since her arrival, the way home in the form of ruby slippers.

And so it turns out that the people who find fulfillment and purpose and joy in life don’t find it in things or even in other people. They discover that whatever it is they needed to be whole, they had within them the whole time.

If you are looking for something to fix you outside yourself, you will be chasing the wind. You will vainly seek experiences that leave you feeling satisfied. Food, drugs, approval, wealth, position, prestige, sex and even religion can become fixations that lead you from green-tinted glasses to flying monkeys, the promised solution always over the next hill or around the next bend.

Like I said earlier, I’ve seen people who stampede through life, frantically trying one fix after another in an attempt to feel ok. Others I know have developed an obsession with one source of elusive satisfaction, following a will-o-the-wisp through pointless swamps of their own unfulfillable appetites.

And that’s how you might get a man who compulsively cheats on his wife.

Because appetites are not meant to point us toward purpose or joy or fulfillment. They are the seasonings, the trimmings, the adornments of life. They are eye color and hair color and painted nails and smiles and tears.

The framework, the strength, the shape, the skeleton, is inside you all along.