Special Training in Contentment

There was a man named Laozi, a philosopher and thinker of the state of Chu in the Spring and Autumn period, famous even now. His book is the Tao Te Ching, and in the Tao Te Ching there is a line like this.

There's another one too—the one who knows contentment is the one who is truly rich. As far as I can tell, that's the same idea, so I'm letting it go.

Anyway, the important part isn't that the two sayings mean roughly the same thing. What I want to say is that the posture of knowing how to be satisfied is what matters.

Of course, the desire to achieve something matters enormously as well. The American poet Stanley Kunitz said desire is the driving force of a life. I agree with that, enthusiastically.

But Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French thinker and novelist, also said that desire drags a person toward a place they can never reach, and that unhappiness lives there. Excessive desire makes people unhappy. Which means that, in the end, you have to know when to cut desire off, and when to tie it down...

"A goal as vague as becoming a streamer my dad can't stomach refusing to acknowledge—that's far too easy a road into excessive desire."

Even so, whenever I tried to lock in a firm standard and a clear goal, an affliction kept whispering to me from one corner of my heart.

You really think you're going to make it that far?

I clutched my head and worried the problem through for hours on end, and in the end I failed to pin down any clear standard. Every time I set a bar, I couldn't be satisfied with it, and the baseline for satisfaction only kept receding. It was the moment I came face to face with my critically underleveled Satisfaction stat.

And so I————

"And that is why I will now begin special training, so that I can become a person who knows how to be satisfied."

Regrettably, the bond between me and my viewers had not yet reached the realm where hearts speak as one. Nothing for it. I'd have to add an explanation.

"As you all know, a hundred thousand subscribers is nothing more than a checkpoint on the road to my grand ambition."

I deliberately did not explain what that grand ambition actually was. Explain it, and you end up neck-deep in my family history. I still wasn't ready to air all of that on stream. With things like this, the correct move is not to answer, and to keep saying what you meant to say.

"But what if I never reach that grand purpose? Then the endless desire to reach it would drag me into unhappiness. Just like Jean-Jacques Rousseau said."

"Thus spoke Laozi. Know contentment, and you are always happy. And the one who knows contentment, he said, is the rich one."

But satisfaction is a harder act than people think. Say you're playing a game. More specifically, say you're already enjoying it to the fullest, wanting for nothing, taking your pleasure where you please.

Then suppose thirty dollars would get you a guaranteed three-star ticket. Could you really shake off the hunger for that three-star? And if the character's dupe scaling is absurd, so that pulling just two more copies would let you play in far more comfort? If you borrowed a friend's character and the limit-broken version performed like a dream? Could I really be satisfied stopping at a namecard?

Oh, for the record, I failed to restrain my desire both times. How are you supposed to resist a guaranteed three-star ticket and a god-tier dupe-scaling monster?

But I can't keep going on like that. The me of right now is a marathon runner sprinting forward without even knowing where the finish line is. And that finish line is something I have to set for myself.

In that case! Wouldn't the ability to set your own finish line be a necessary virtue for the marathon runner known as Marchen?! No. It is necessary. This is absolutely necessary!

"To strengthen my capacity for satisfaction, I have prepared it! My hidden-ace special training!!! Today's training is none other than...!!!"

"Spending? Not happening! This is about cultivating a heart of steel—one that can play the game and still be satisfied with the starter characters alone!"

All right, then. The viewers' reaction would be...

Well. I'd expected reactions more or less like that.

A person who had spent her entire broadcast career as a devout worshipper of spending, and its most passionate public advocate, suddenly converting to F2P? A person who had rammed twelve thousand dollars into a single game over the course of one year? A person who, even after that game hit Seobjong and the entire twelve thousand vanished into thin air, was already thinking about spending on a different one? A person who called spending "paying the server bill," and insisted that buying the monthly pass was basic literacy, now playing without spending a cent?

Who was going to believe that?

But it was precisely because I was that kind of person that this training meant something. And so I declared it.

"...For the duration of this training, I'm going to leave video donations open. Audiovisual material ought to be better bait for leading a person astray. In exchange, please only send video donations that tempt me to spend—ones that interfere with my iron resolve. If I get the sense that too many donations with nothing to do with the training are rolling in, I'm closing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them on the spot."

That, for the sake of the training, I would set my ironclad principle down. Just this once. The result was that my sincerity got through to the viewers.

It came through a little too well.

"This is not the last stream, you know? I do not have a terminal illness?! I hit a hundred thousand yesterday and today's the finale—there is no joke like this joke! I fully intend to stream long enough to smear shit all over that wall, thank you very much?! And more importantly, did I just receive a thousand dollars?! This is a joke, right? Who spends a thousand dollars as a joke?! Are you actually trying to force a finale on me?! It's not even the first time I've turned video donations on during a stream! ...This is cyberbullying!!!"

After successfully putting a stop to the cyberbullying, I picked the explanation of the training back up from where it had stalled.

"...Anyway! The important part of this training is the penalty. If I set a penalty that's too harsh, it'd actually be a huge help in resisting temptation, which would get in the way of building my satisfaction stat. But if there's no penalty at all, I'll just turn into weak-willed Marchen, right?"

So I'd thought long and hard about the penalty. Thought hard, specifically, about a penalty that would put real weight on failure while still preserving, as much as possible, the temptation to spend. And the penalty I came up with was—

"Penalty number one!! If I spend money while this training is underway, I will shower all of you with gifts equal to whatever I spent! Gift subs, gift cards, fried chicken, burgers, whatever it is!!!"

"And penalty number two! If the amount I spend crosses a certain line... on Marchen's Newtube..."

I squeeze my eyes shut. Do I really have to go this far? The doubt rises.

But in the end, the words come out anyway.

With my eyes still squeezed shut.

"...I'll upload a Bunny Boing-Boing Remix video!! And on top of that, a full one-hour video tooooooo!!!!"

I can do this... right?