2012 MY DIARY - MAR 20 - want

Wanting What You Haven’t Got...

Often we do not realize what we really want until we lose it. We don’t see what is important, or appreciate all that we have until it’s gone. As cliché as this may sound, even for those of us who are aware of what is significant in our lives, we still usually do not prioritize it or enjoy it until it is too late and we no longer have it. The same goes for people. Taking someone for granted is an all too common sin - even the most innocent of you have probably been guilty of this at least once in your lives. Only when the person walks out on you, or when other circumstances keep you apart, or even worse, when death is the culprit, does one truly comprehend just how much that person meant to them. It’s as though we need to be actually missing something in our lives in order to feel as though we miss it.

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. But what if the distance is so great and irrevocable that you never see that person again? How will your heart feel then? Will it still beat for that long-lost soul, no matter what? It is common knowledge that people often want what they don’t have. But can you keep wanting and pining after that which you don’t have, even when you know for certain that you will never have it again? Perhaps simply knowing that you will never have that special something or someone is why you find it so special in the first place. Some of the most powerful stories of all time were based on the premise of unrequited love, which has been said to be the most powerful of all simply because of its condemned fate. But while it is true that tragedies have a more poignant effect on their audiences, is it not also true that all of us ultimately want a happy ending?

You may have to be an optimist to believe that all things will work out at the end of the day, but the desire for things to work out is innate in us all (even if on an unconscious level for some). Paradoxically, although we are prone to yearn for happiness, by continuously wanting and searching for things we cannot have, in order to make us happy, we are doomed to fail. Strangely enough, it is our inevitable failure which breeds desire. It seems we search more actively and hopefully for things we want when we are faced with the damned destiny that we cannot have them; only when we cannot find a way to achieve something or be with someone, do we want it, or them, more badly. It’s as if our likelihood of success in being happy is inversely proportional to our aspiration of it. At the end of the day, we are cursed to living in a dystopic Catch-22 world, where we only notice the real value of things and people – and as a result want them more - when they are permanently absent in our lives.

Buddhists believe that a cup must be empty before it can be filled… they were not talking about kitchen containers. The cup is a metaphor for the mind, and perhaps, in this case, for our lives, in general. You need to empty your life in order to be able to realize what is missing and what it needs to be filled with. Only by removing things from it, can you see what and how much you actually need. Like water, which we cannot live without, we only realize just how much we need it when we stop consuming it. Only when we don’t have anything to drink, do we attach the correct value to the precious fluid which keeps us alive.

I recently became very thirsty… for love, life and purpose. I had not drunk in a while. So I took a huge glass and filled it with water (a symbol of everything that keeps me alive). I drank it up in one go and felt instantly refreshed. Unfortunately, that was the only water left. Soon enough I was thirsty again, and I wished I had rationed the water earlier. I wished that I had taken small sips of it, swirled the water in my mouth, feeling the texture of it against my tongue, the coolness of it on my lips, before swallowing the pure, soothing substance down my parched throat. Now that there is no water left, all I can think about is that I am dying of thirst and that I would give anything just for another drop of water.