Some Of The Caveats Of Getting What We Want
Happiness is not as simple as acquiring and holding the object of our desires.
In almost every movie, I see a fantasy that plays out over and over again. There is conflict and struggle. The struggle comes in steps and layers until finally, the climax is achieved, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the protagonist gets what she wanted. And for a moment, we’re happy.
It seems to me that as we grow older, there is a non-linear progression, a correspondence between our age, what we want, and the complexity of the task of getting what we want. When we’re infants we get what we want most days. We get the warm breast milk, we get the warmth of our mother’s body, we get the gaze from mom and dad. We get the sense of security that comes with knowing someone is there for us. In the early years, getting what we want is simple because what we want is given to us.
Through training in a culture that is so sure that we have to earn everything we receive, we begin to believe that we have to work for everything we receive. Some of us have been convinced that we must earn love. As if love is a transaction, something we deserve, something we must achieve. We have been taught that we must work for love rather than to just receive it.
Work. Isn’t that what gives everything value?
I think of how often we look at the gifts around us and assume that we deserve them. I think of how often we assume that what we have is what gives us value as human beings, as people. Our culture promotes the idea that our achievements and our property justify the love that we receive.
Love is energy. It flows everywhere we choose to look for it.
I found love. But I had to change the way I look at things in order to find love. It wasn’t what I expected it to be. The movies aren’t even close because they’re someone else’s fantasy. And it seems to me that most of our fantasies are rooted in deprivation. As if somehow, getting what we want would make us whole. But it doesn’t.
