Sunday, April 3, 2011

What if what you want is not what you need?

Pursuing what you want if it is not what you need to survive, physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually, may make you ill.  Worse, if you don't watch for the warning signs, it might even cause your death.

For most of us, wanting is something innocent at first.  If someone said, "What do you want to eat for a month?," at ages 4 to 8 it might be: "Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream!" But if you ordered a ton of mint chocolate chip ice cream and then you were dropped off at a cabin in Alaska with nothing else to eat, you might be happy for about 2 days depending upon the weather. But then after those two days you (or any person at any age) might not die but at some point might get very sick, even if it was only sick of mint chocolate chip ice cream!

Later in life, for example for me, it was some beautiful woman I might want to know.  Because I was 6 foot 4 1/2 inches tall and nice looking, often I could date almost any woman I liked who was both single and available. But this wasn't necessarily a good thing. Because when you are young you don't know a lot about what's really important in life unless you have really suffered in your life and sometimes not even then. So, once again, "What if what you want is not what you need?"

This is something that haunts all of us.  In my life one of the most haunting aspects has always been: "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!"  This to a greater or lesser degree has been my life and I've got to tell you this is kind of scary at times. I suppose the good thing about this is that I very quickly realized what I don't want and could then move on (hopefully) to something or someone more useful long term in my life. So getting what you want, you might actually find out what you need. Presumably you won't have had two or more kids before realizing "Oh My God!, this is not at all what I really needed!" But often this happens too. So, once again my caution about life is:
"Be very careful what you wish for. You just might get it!"

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