I'm not clear on the point you're making. I see that variety in life needn't involve consumerism, in that you could seek variety outside of buying a host of products. But I think consumerism has co-opted the value of variety, at least in developed societies. Just look at the array of mass-produced products on offer in the mall, the supermarket, or on Amazon. So when we think that variety is the spice of life, we likely think of all the possible things or services we could buy, not about observing variety in nature or imagining various possible worlds.

But sure, the search for something deeply satisfying might happen in opposition to consumerism. My point was that the concept of a wasted life is relative to a social function. And in consumerist societies, that function is to consume the widest possible variety of stuff, so that the wasted life is one in which you suffer from a "fear of missing out."