A man goes on holiday and returns with a complaint. The hotel was overpriced, the food was average, the weather was inconvenient and the itinerary was exhausting. He has photographs of all of it, naturally. The holiday was a failure, but at least the evidence is comprehensive.

His wife disagrees. She thought the holiday was lovely, apart from the hotel, the food, the weather and the itinerary. They have spent a week travelling several thousand kilometres to discover that they are both dissatisfied customers.

This is the new human condition. We no longer merely live through experiences. We assess them. We inspect them for value, compare them against alternatives and decide whether they have delivered what we paid for. We have brought the habits of online shopping into the most intimate parts of existence. A holiday is reviewed. A restaurant is rated. A friendship is evaluated. A career is audited. A marriage is expected to provide emotional returns.

The world has become our service provider, and we are increasingly difficult customers.

The language is everywhere. Does this relationship add value to your life? Is this job aligned with your purpose? Is this city giving you what you need? Are these people your tribe? We speak as though every person we meet is a product competing for shelf space in our emotional supermarket.

There is a certain usefulness in asking whether a job is worth keeping or whether a relationship is harming us. Nobody should be expected to remain loyal to misery simply because it has been around for a long time. But the language of self-improvement has made us suspicious of anything that does not produce immediate personal benefit. We have become reluctant to do things merely because they are kind, necessary or expected of us.

A friendship must be enriching. A conversation must be stimulating. A holiday must be transformative. A Sunday must be restorative. Even rest is now expected to demonstrate measurable outcomes, preferably before Monday morning.

The middle-aged Indian, who once complained about children being too self-centred, has enthusiastically joined the movement. He wants his morning walk to improve his longevity, his breakfast to optimise his health, his holiday to enhance his wellbeing and his children to validate his sacrifices. He is no longer simply going for a walk. He is pursuing a lifestyle outcome.

 

The trouble begins when life refuses to behave like a well-designed product.

A restaurant can serve a good meal. It cannot guarantee that the people at the table will have anything interesting to say to one another. A holiday can provide a beautiful location. It cannot repair a marriage that has been deteriorating for years. A promotion can improve a salary. It cannot necessarily provide dignity, meaning or a personality that is less exhausting to be around.

Yet we increasingly blame the experience for failing to produce the feeling we expected. The holiday was overrated. The city was boring. The restaurant was not worth the money. The relationship had lost its spark. The event was a waste of time.

Sometimes, of course, these assessments are accurate. Much of what is sold to us is mediocre, overpriced and aggressively marketed. But we have also developed an extraordinary capacity to arrive at a place with a fantasy in our heads and then punish the place for not complying.

We do this because we have been trained to expect satisfaction. Every advertisement promises it. Every lifestyle influencer displays it. Every app is designed to remove friction. Food arrives at the door, entertainment appears on demand and a car comes to collect us. We have grown accustomed to a world that responds to our preferences, and we are increasingly offended by anything that requires patience, compromise or uncertainty.

A delayed flight becomes a personal insult. A slow restaurant becomes an assault on our dignity. A friend who does not reply immediately is suspected of disrespect. We may have survived power cuts, crowded trains and government offices, but we now expect a WhatsApp message to be answered with the urgency of a national emergency.

Convenience has made us less tolerant of reality.

The marketplace has also taught us to turn every decision into a status statement. A house is not merely a place to live. It is evidence of taste. A school is not merely an institution for learning. It is a declaration of parental competence. A holiday is not merely time away. It is proof that we know how to live. Even simplicity is displayed with the careful confidence of a luxury product.

One person posts pictures from a resort. Another posts from a remote village where there is no network. The first wants us to know that he can afford comfort. The second wants us to know that he can do without it. Both have remembered to photograph the experience.

We have managed to turn freedom from comparison into another competition.

The more disturbing change is what this mentality does to relationships. We have begun to expect people to be emotionally efficient. They should listen well, understand quickly, respect boundaries, offer encouragement and never become inconvenient. We want companionship without obligation and intimacy without the burden of another person’s moods, needs or limitations.

But a relationship is not a customer experience. People are untidy. They repeat themselves. They disappoint us. They arrive with problems when we had planned to discuss our own. They fail to say the right thing at the right time. Sometimes they need more from us than they can give back.

This is not an argument for tolerating cruelty or remaining in damaging relationships. It is an argument against the childish idea that every human connection must leave us feeling better than it found us. Sometimes the point of being a friend is to sit with another person while they are unbearable. Sometimes love involves doing something that will never be acknowledged, photographed or returned.

The customer expects satisfaction. The adult understands responsibility.

Perhaps this is why ordinary life has begun to feel inadequate. It contains too many things that cannot be posted, measured or defended. An afternoon spent talking to an ageing parent may produce no achievement. A visit to a relative may not be enjoyable. A quiet evening may have no lesson. A difficult conversation may leave everybody unhappy but still be necessary.

We have become so anxious about wasting time that we have started demanding productivity from moments that were never meant to produce anything.

The irony is that the pursuit of a better life has made us less available to the one we already have. We are busy recording the meal, researching the next holiday, comparing our careers, improving our bodies and reviewing our relationships. We have become managers of our own existence, with dashboards, targets and an unending list of corrective actions.

Somewhere, a person is sitting at a family dinner wondering whether the evening is worth it. Someone else is on a beach calculating whether the holiday has generated sufficient memories. Another is in a relationship wondering whether the partner is contributing enough to personal growth. Nobody has yet considered that the relentless evaluation may be the reason the experience feels so thin.

There is a particular cruelty in treating life as a service that owes us satisfaction. It turns disappointment into evidence of failure and makes ordinary happiness seem suspiciously underachieved. We forget that some of the best things in life arrive without a strong proposition. They are not transformational. They do not improve our social standing. They simply remain with us.

A conversation that goes nowhere. A meal that is not photographed. A journey that takes longer than expected. A friend who calls without needing anything. A day that has no achievement worth announcing.

These are not defective experiences. They are the material of a life.

The world does not owe us a memorable holiday, an inspiring career, an emotionally intelligent family or a fulfilling Tuesday. We can work towards these things, certainly. We can demand fairness, quality and accountability. But we cannot outsource the meaning of our lives to the experiences we purchase or the people we encounter.

At some point, the customer has to leave the counter.

Not every meal needs a review. Not every relationship needs a performance assessment. Not every day needs to justify its existence.

Some things are worth doing even when they offer no return.