Tuesday, December 27, 2011

All I want

Want is such a tricky concept. It can lead to great things. Like vaccines or medical treatments from ambitious, smart people who want to find cures for the disease they saw destroying family members or friends. Or to the grand experiment of democratic republics from those who saw life under a monarchy and wanted something better.

But it can also be a destructive force. On some simplistic, basic level, isn't addiction a form of wanting? Wanting Helen led to a war. People can bankrupt themselves with wanting. Wanting bigger houses, brighter jewelry, procedures that will keep them young. People can make themselves crazy, break their own hearts every day, with wanting things out of their reach. When applied carelessly, want can be the most painful emotion out there.

What I want most for this new year is, quite simply, to stop wanting. Want has not been my friend of late. I have not felt the good kind of want, the kind that can make a person push herself or leave her comfort zone. No, I've been stuck with the futile wanting of something that is out of my grasp. And the further removed I am, the more desperately I want it. I never knew it was possible to miss a person this much. (And missing a living person is so very much worse than missing a dead one.)

So since I can't be a sensible person and stop wanting what I can't have or find something new, better, to want, all I can hope for and work on now is to stop wanting. Because if I don't want anything, I won't keep feeling so hurt and raw and cut open every damn day when I can't have it.

3 comments:

Burt Likko said...

Get zen!

S said...

That's actually just what I was going to say! I'm pretty good at being Zen with mosquitoes. So I need to work at being Zen in other ways. A few years ago, I stopped doing yoga because I was too frustrated that I never reached a restful place with corpse pose. Instead, my mind was always wandering to what I would buy at the grocery store on my way home and what path through the aisles would be most efficient, etc. (I spend A LOT of time mapping out paths to maximize efficiency.) But I just signed up for a yoga class beginning next week because I have decided that I will just be Zen with the fact that resting corpse pose for me means letting my mind wander to the next things I have to do. So, see, I am getting there.

BellsforStacy said...

I relate, in a different way, which I imagine you can guess. Wants are like wishes, and if wishes were horses beggers would ride.

I hope 2012 is better for you, on this front.

 
Blog Designed by : NW Designs