What Do We Really Want?

_{Where did that question come from? We’re going along happily enough, doing the humdrum routine that has its comforts. Then this nagging question comes along. And it does come along because there’s something nagging in our insides, something we haven’t totally digested.}

_{We don’t always do what we really want to because, one way or another, we believe, maybe, we know, the price will be too expensive, more than we are ready to have ourselves pay. There are so many kinds of costs, not only those involving} money.

 

It may be self-esteem. Aren’t we all afraid of looking like a fool in front of people we respect? Or we are in a committed relationship and yet we really feel like doing something that will put that relationship, and all the resources you have invested in it, in jeopardy?

 

 So you just shrug your shoulders metaphorically and go on doing what you are doing. But you don’t forget it. It is always there. Sometimes you take it out of your deep pocket, mull it over, and put it back again in your pocket. And that’s where it stays unless some event provokes a crisis that forces you to re-think the tenor of your life.

I know, life can be an emotional jungle. We often see people do things that we would never do. We just shake our heads, and shrink back to what we were doing, stifling those feelings of wonderment at the daring so-and-so exhibited that totally changed his life.

The truth is, if we are willing to admit it to ourselves, we often don’t do what we really want to because we wouldn’t dare because it might upset our applecart. We may fear that and it freezes us into inaction until the moment passes.

And then we admire someone who really goes for broke regardless of the consequences. We may criticize them in our own minds for their actions because of the impact these actions may have had on others involved in the situation, reasons we offer to ourselves for never doing such a thing.

It took me fifty years to make my play for the gal I really wanted, because I lived up to  commitments I had already made to others, regardless of what I really wanted to do. (I did try after thirty years, but I did not find the right words or the right actions. We passed each other by as on floating rafts on a boundless ocean.)

I acted in the end only when events had freed me from the obligations I had taken on. Prior to that, it did not matter to me that the deal I had made had left me the loser in my own mind. (At least, that’s what I tell myself.)

 It was my last desperate attempt to set things right, and I planned it for almost a year. My good fortune was to somehow find the right words and actions to save myself, and, hopefully, do something similar for her. You’d have to ask her about that.

But when it came to career changes, I was ready TO change my path in a flash regardless of the unknown potential consequences for myself and those dependent on me. Ask me why the behavior was different…….. I have no answer.

Perhaps I had a conviction that somehow I would find the answers I would need to find in the face of any threatened failure.

People are a puzzle, aren’t they? Maybe twenty years of deep therapy would reveal the answer.

We are a hodge-podge of motivations, writing stuff into our emotional DNA every moment we are alive. Our earliest experiences in life cut deep trails without our being consciously aware, but there is no doubt, the recorder is making notes every moment we are alive. Often, we are not alive to the feedback. But our behaviors can be unconsciously influenced without our fully understanding the rationale that drives our behaviors.

Then there are our obsessions, things we are driven to do beyond all reason. If we achieve them, they mark for us a satisfaction beyond all others. They become the thing in our minds that justifies for us the very reason we were placed on this earth. If we fail to achieve them, they become the thing that haunts our lives with a sense of failure.

This can be pretty important stuff for us. The older we get, blessed with time for contemplation, the more likely we will be fortunate enough to puzzle out the secrets about our lives we never had a chance to figure out. With that may come a sense of peace, a sense of completion not everyone of us is blessed to achieve in our lives.

 I think we can be drawn to people like that because they radiate something we all may wish we could find in our own lives.