When I Don't Know Isn't an Answer

What do we really want when I don’t know isn’t an answer. When it comes to the big things and the possibilities are endless, we often don’t even know where to begin. Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, the American Dream.. sounds simple enough. But the pursuit of Happiness can lead us in a million different directions and it seems like there are a lot of dead end streets. One step forward and two steps back, it’s a wonder we get anywhere at all.

What we don’t want is easier. We don’t want to work for the rest of our lives and most of us don’t even want to go to work tomorrow. We are working solely because the credit card companies say we have to pay them back. But if you don’t go to work tomorrow, what do you want to do instead? A few days off would be nice, a Caribbean vacation, maybe even a trip around the world, and then what? You could pick up a hobby, surf the web, get in shape, and then get bored. You can’t do nothing for forever. And we don’t want to marry the boy next door, he seems so boring and safe. Most of us relish the challenge and the thrill of the chase. We want to sow our wild oats, we want to be free, independent and in control. But how long can we be alone? What about ageing? If we definitely don’t want to get old, how young do we really want to be? Sixteen was a blast, but I think I’d rather kill myself than go back. And twenty-one was great, but I didn’t have a clue how to dress. Eventually, we have to grow up, even Peter Pan and Wendy had to leave Never Never Land.

What we do want is to not have to figure it out for ourselves. Figuring out what we want means asking ourselves what we don’t have, it means changing what we do have, it means we have to decide. It means making a commitment to something or someone, it means a lot of work. We want it all and we can’t have it. We want to have our cake and eat it too, but we have to choose and it’s so much easier to just let things happen. If we never decide what we want, then we can never really be wrong, we can never make a mistake, it can never be our fault. The status quo is seductive, and the what if can scare you to the death.

The funny thing is, we can spend our whole lives trying to be unique and extraordinary, but when it comes to what we want, most of us are quite ordinary. We want a place where we feel loved and respected. We want something that we can believe in and be proud of. We want to be able to recognize a good thing when we’ve got it and we want someone who gets us back. We want to finally get something right and we want to have someone that isn’t afraid to tell us when we’re wrong. We want to be understood without saying a word. We want to be someone’s best friend. We want something that can change our lives for forever and someone we can’t live without. We want to have something we can call our very own and someone that will answer every time we call. And while we may spend most of our lives searching for Prince Charming and dreaming of the fairy tale, at the end of the day, we all just want something that we know is real.