What Do You Want?
Our world is filled with self-help gurus, new age hippies, and social media influencers. I am not stating anything that has not been said thousand times over, but this begs the question: why? Are we so disconnected from ourselves that constant seeking for affirmation has become a societal norm?
Or is it something much deeper?
As the great Terrance McKenna once said, “Time is speeding up.” What he meant by that was that more things are happening at once all over the place; greater than at any other point in the history of our species. This sensation has caused us to lose focus on the present. The here and the now. We are forever distracted from notifications, rings, dings, and flying machines that we can never catch our breath. We sometimes forget to even breathe.
It is no wonder that with all the hustle and bustle of our modern world that we are seeking more, perhaps now more than ever. But what exactly is that more? More things? More friends? More acknowledgement? More control? More comfort?
What is the “it” you are seeking more of?
If you’re stumped here. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You’re not the first. And you certainly will not be the last. Take from the lecture, “Do You Do It or Does It Do You”, as it is explained in another fashion:
It’s as if people came to the Buddha and said,
“Sir, we suffer terribly. And what are we going to do about that?”
To that he replies, “You suffer because you desire.”
The people said, “Well, now that makes sense.”
“Alright,” he (the buddha) says, “Now, see if you can do without desire.”
And all those students go away and see if they can calm their desires.
They come back and say, “Well, this is pretty difficult. ‘Cause we are animals beings, and we have all these animal appetites to begin with. And then beyond that, we are in the unfortunate position of being aware of time. Being aware of the future. And although its advantageous to know about the future, in the long run, its depressing. Because we all know that we come to a bad end. That everything falls apart over time. So, there seems to be a sort of futility to it all. Desire. Desire for whatever it is that you want. But behind this, the intention of studying desire; seeing whether one can discipline desire, seeing whether one can curb it, is a deeper question altogether.
And that is, ‘What do you desire?’”
-Alan Watts
In all the drama, in all the noise, we forget to take the time to ask ourselves, “What do we desire?” Because, if we really asked ourselves that question, we would see that many of the things we think we want, we don’t really want. To make matters worse, because we don’t take this time, we end up wasting our time spending countless hours toiling away doing things we don’t like to obtain things we don’t want.
As Mr. Watts would say, “And that’s just stupid!”
Take the time to decide what you want. These things are the very essence of you. The preferences and likes you have are not there by happenstance. These are the seedlings of desire. The first expressions of passion. To find your life’s passion, you must first assess the primary likes and dislikes of your own unique perspective. From there, you can foster a life’s passion, rather than trying to “discover” one. Embrace trying, failing, learning, and trying again.
It is tempting to follow the paths of others, especially in an over commercialized world. If you don’t know your passion, simply slipping into other people’s experiences is the easiest way to abate any discomfort you may feel as a result of not knowing what you want. However, now is the time to embrace your individuality. Your meaning. No one else can decide that for you. And you can’t decide that for yourself based on the opinions and fads of others. It is wholly up to you.
