That was a clip from the pilot episode of Mad Men, the hit series that aired on AMC from 2007 to 2015. I’m a huge fan. And this small piece of dialogue from the very first episode is one among many pearls of writing from the show.
What we’re hearing here is Don Draper, a Madison Avenue ad man from the 1950s and the series’s main character, telling a prospective client the essence of his business: to manufacture desire. Why? Because once you’ve gotten someone to feel that they lack something or that they’re unhappy, then you can sell them a product that promises to fill that gap. That, in so many words, is the core of advertising according to the show—and it became a core feature of humans living in American society.
What Mad Men did so effectively was to show the costs of this worldview. So many of the characters, including Don, seem to suffer from not knowing who they really are. They are so busy being told what they’re supposed to want that they spend their lives craving and never, it seems, being truly happy. (I’ll also confess that one of the reasons I love the show is that eventually Don makes his way out to California, and the closing episode of the series features him sitting on a meditation retreat.)
This is the fourth episode in our miniseries on gratitude, and today I want to focus on this issue of living in a consumerist society. While it’s not the 1950s anymore, it feels like it has only gotten worse: We don’t just see ads on billboards or in newspapers or on TV—now we experience them in all those places and on our screens all the time. It feels like someone is always trying to sell us something, and to do that they’re implicitly telling us that we lack the thing we want.
But living with a constant feeling of lack isn’t healthy. Whether you’re a character on Mad Men or alive today, that pervasive feeling of inadequacy can lead to a warped sense of self, self-destructive behaviors, and abuse. And when a whole society is built on that foundation, it can lead to people treating one another as objects, using them and feeling used by others. Ick.
One of the things about gratitude is that it’s an antidote to all that. When we’re grateful, we’re not focused on what we don’t have. We’re not asking what’s not here, or what can I get that will make me happy? We’re asking, what do I have right now, and how does it contribute good things to my life? If Mad Men is about the corrosiveness of consumerist culture, then gratitude practice is like a protective force field against it.
In Jewish parlance, there’s probably no more important teaching about this kind of gratitude than the words uttered by Shimon ben Zoma two thousand years ago: “Eizehu ashir? Hasameach b’chelko. Who is wealthy? Someone who is happy with what they have.”
This isn’t exactly rocket science, and it’s not like it’s some deep secret. In fact, Don Draper on Mad Men knows it: If people were happy with what they had, they wouldn’t buy the things he’s trying to sell them. But rather than allow ourselves to be manipulated into feeling like we constantly need to get something, gratitude practice can help us actually experience the fullness and joy of the extraordinary people, things, and experiences already in our lives.
So how do we activate that protective force field? How do we step out of Don Draper’s pitch and step into Ben Zoma’s wealth?
Here’s a practice that can help.
You can do this right where you are—whether you’re sitting, walking, or just pausing for a minute before moving on to the next task.
I want to invite you to take a mental screenshot of this moment. Right now.
You can look around or just tune into your immediate physical surroundings. See if you can find one detail right now that no company can monetize. It might be the cool air moving through your nostrils. Or the way the light lands on the wall. Or the simple, quiet weight of your body resting in your chair. Or the fact that your heart is beating completely on its own.
You can think of this as an unsponsored moment. It’s just here—freely given to you by life. It hasn’t been brought to you by a brand. There’s no algorithm tracking it, no product you need to buy to unlock it. It exists purely between you and the universe—a free gift that is already yours.
See if you can gently hold that mental snapshot for five seconds. Try to feel the quiet stillness of a space that nobody is trying to buy or sell.
This unmonetized space is your true wealth. This is your chelek—the portion of life that is already complete, right now, just as it is.
When I was a kid, whenever we would say a blessing over food at shul, the rabbi would kind of jokingly say, “And now a word to our sponsor.” So, if you feel moved, take that feeling of satisfaction and channel it into a simple, “Thank you.”
You have so much of what you need already. For this week, see if you can do this practice once a day, see if it helps, and let me know how it goes.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.