Getting What We Want Isn’t What We Really Want

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with deciding to go and get what you want.

Simply getting better at acquiring the things we want does little good. We suffer whether we get the thing or not. If we don’t get it, we suffer the loss. If we do get it, we still suffer because we know we will lose it.

But it would help us to remember that what we really want isn’t the thing itself. What we want is the experience of ease and unfettered enjoyment that is promised, falsely, by the thought of acquiring the thing—the restaurant meal, the cruise, the raise, the loving relationship—even though everything comes with its own pains and complications and r... See more

Instead, he believes it’s how we want that matters. Our well-being hinges on whether we grasp at our desires, doing anything to relieve the feeling, or whether we can instead coolly recognize our desires as they really are: little bubbles of impulse that perpetually form in our awareness, tickle us for a bit, then float away.

our level of happiness is directly tied to our endless, tissue-box-like supply of cravings and desires, but has little to do with whether or not those wants are fulfilled.

I have no problem waiting five or ten minutes for menus, or even longer. I’m not desperate to eat, I’m desperate to be free of the existential limbo of not knowing whether we’ve been completely overlooked. Human needs are strange—I could fast for twelve hours with little discomfort, yet sometimes it’s amazingly difficult to bear a tiny uncertainty ... See more

Getting what we want, or think we want—in those brief moments when we actually do—always seems to be more complicated and fraught than what we pictured.

The ease itself we can find much more readily by understanding our wants rather than scrambling to relieve them. We live in a society that’s constantly, cynically, promising that ease and relief through the getting of a particular thing, showing us pictures of it whenever possible, showing us how affordable it is. I constantly forget that it’s the ... See more