***
Imagine a man who wants to do something—really do something—with himself. (It is not so difficult to imagine. We are all forced to do as much.) This man wants to be good. (Who would want to be otherwise?) Ah, but he cannot keep all of the good in his mind's eye! He can only envision a fragment of it. When he thinks of being good (and he does not necessarily think of it as “good” but only what he wants and approves of), he thinks of being held in high-esteem. He wants to be admired and respected for doing something the people who know him (or simply know of him) think is significant or good. He wants this for himself more than anything else. It could be fairly called his one fundamental want. It is his goal. It frees him from anxiety because, any time he falls, he can look up and see significance on the horizon. 'Yes' to food, shelter, clothing, and the rest, but what he really wants is significance. He thinks he is up to the task.
Let us give him gifts. Let us assume he has a knack for speaking and an abundance of charisma. He will try and try to make himself significant through enthusiastic performances. He will apply himself and jockey for position. He will leap through more and higher hoops than his peers. He will try to affect change through nimble suggestion-making in one context and through blustery assertions in another. He tries to climb the ranks and is poised to be what people above him need.
Add one more thing. Give his peers deaf ears so that every time he speaks they hear only white noise. Then, you will not give him what he wants. If you make his talents impotent, you will make him unhappy. He has never been certain what significance is, but he knows he has not achieved it. If he is a strong man, full of the volatile mixture of conviction and arrogance, he may try and try again. He may alter his wardrobe, enroll in new studies, write ingratiating letters, and dole out favors with strings attached. Still, no one hears him. When he has grown sore from tension and tired from expectation—when he realizes his time is passed—he will be unshakably unhappy. Thereafter, he can think of nothing else but how the one thing he asked for (and strived to get) was denied him.
Our man has become unhappy in a definitive way when he does not get what he wants. This is what it is to be broken: to be unable to get what you want. He retains all of his abilities, but they cannot get him what he wants. He knows what he can do, but that means nothing to him without his deeds being efficacious. Attach a loving woman to his arm and a friendly neighbor next door, and he still will not be happy. Stick him in a web of caring family members, and he will not be whisked out of his unhappiness. In his senescence he may forget what exactly it was that he wanted, but he is never far from his disappointment. The man who does not get what he wants (even though what he wants is limited) is unhappy.
***
What of the man, though, who gets what he wants and is still unhappy? Let us, for the sake of discussion, imagine the same man again. Let us say he again wants significance (although that is but one example and could be any other object of ultimate desire). Instead of withholding significance from him, give it to him in droves. Give him the same uncanny intuition but add unblemished success. Sit him down in a high backed leather chair and fine clothes. Hang an admirable title beneath his name. Stuff him full of accolades and adorn his walls with flattering articles. He will be happy until you give him one more little thing. Give him a little time (which adds nothing new, per se, but simply more of the same). Keep giving him what he has and nothing more. Give him time and that chair will surely cause a crick in his neck and his voice will be muted with unhappiness.
I imagine the man who climbed Everest must have been filled with joy upon finally reaching the summit. Icy tears must have frozen to his cheeks at the sublime view. He surely swelled with ecstasy at the magnificent summation of all his struggling. His legs likely collapsed in appreciation to the pinnacle of that great rock now giving him rest. He has what he wanted and, for a moment, he is happy. But the celebration can rightfully last so long. Within a short time, he was looking below the horizon. He was thinking about his descent. He was surveying the impending travails and plotting the best return course.
If out of beneficence you told him he could stay, you would not help him. If you arranged for food and drink to be regularly delivered to the peak, if you planned to fly his wife and children to the pinnacle, if you hired a journalist and photographer to document him and further his fame, if you were to erect a thoroughly insulated home that could keep he and his family warm, if you made it possible for him to live a long life on the spot of his greatest accomplishment, you would only make him miserably unhappy. A person cannot bask in the warmth of his achievements forever because time cools all waters. A person cannot rest when he gets what he wants, because he needs more than he is want to want.
***
Desires have their roots in needs. We need most to persist. Before we need anything else, we need to continue existing in order to have our other needs fulfilled. Being can only be nourished by being. Food, drink, and air are all existent beings that supplement the being we are. It follows, although it is not often heeded, that what we need most is what exists most: goodness (to do), truth (to think), and beauty (to perceive). Their satiating power far exceeds the abundant but comparatively paltry fodder of pleasure, entertainment, and lust.
We are not so inept and ignorant as to be totally clueless about what we require to persist. We have inklings and half-cooked notions about how best to go about persisting. We need something to think, something to do, and something to perceive in order to persist. We can identify some parts of what we need. Thus, we want some of what we need. The desire is incomplete, though, because we need so much in order to unceasingly persist. How could we not leave something off the list?
What is on our live's lists is what people deems themselves capable of acquiring. Everyone has strengths. Everyone will stay within the confines of those strengths in order to live most confidently and comfortably. Moreover, they are means of differentiating ourselves. A person recognizes a need to hunt if he is a superior marksman. A person recognizes a need to relate to others if she is compassionate. There is something laudable about concentrating on one part of life's possibilities: we become experts within that realm. The desire to exercise one’s expertise corresponds with the need to excel. But this need is but one of many and is not even the greatest. Beware: the magnifying glass enlarges the miniature, but we should not allow ourselves to forget there is much more beyond the scope of the lens. One falls off a cliff following a trail with it.
A person is unhappy not getting and getting what he wants because he is short-sighted. The problem with short-sightedness is you are never seeing as much as you need (even when you are seeing as much as you can). What a person is good at doing is not tautological with what is good for a person to do. The same applies to what a person thinks and perceives: penchants, strengths, gifts, skills, talents, predilections, dispositions, and preferences all narrow a field that is much, much wider. They make it possible for us to chart a course. Dispositions contain pre-fabricated destinations. They give us direction. We want what they tell us to want and they motivate us to pursue those ends. But as any runner will tell you, it is good to stretch. It is good to be expanded beyond your comforts. We are more than what we do and especially more than what we do well.
A person is unhappy not getting and getting what he wants because he is self-reliant. The problem with self-reliance is you are never replenishing as much as you devour (even when you are devouring yourself). What a person possesses is not tautological with a person’s identity. A person is not a closed-system. We are in a state of dependence and should not presume otherwise. We have more than ourselves and should be grateful.
***
There is an image that is helpful to understanding our situation. Tie a carrot to the end of a stick and dangle it before of a draught animal. If it is hungry, you will get it to walk lengthy distances provided the stick is the right length. If the stick is too short, the animal will shake its head to be rid of the nuisance. If the stick is too long, the animal will never take an interest. The goal needs to be attainable (but not readily so) in order to persuade it to do what you want.
The animal does not consider the potency of the carrot but thinks only about eating it. The food is right before its eyes, so the animal needs not scavenge. It needs only to pursue. In the end, it expends greater energy pursuing its food than if it would have settled for the nearby fields.
If the animal could ever sink its teeth into the object of its desire, it would quickly devour the snack. If it eats the carrot, its hunger would return shortly after consumption. The goal is insufficient. The animal would meander around in search of more to eat and forget all about the carrot.
Animals chasing after carrots are analogous as us. We set goals that take time, but not too much time. We want to feel ourselves making progress. The person who is unhappy not getting what he wants fails to realize what surrounds him. He is like the animal that chases after the carrot in front of it despite the green grass at its feet. The person who is unhappy getting what he wants is like the animal that eats the carrot. He overestimated the value of what he pursued.
No comments:
Post a Comment