The main street bistro was bustling for a lazy mid-summer morning. The waitress barely gave a glance as she rushed by the man seated reading yesterday’s news, “do you know what you want,” she asked on the fly. In the moment he was stuck between the pancakes or the French toast but the tone of the server’s question “what do you want” got him thinking beyond diet. “I’ll take some serenity, with a side of enlightenment,” he whispered to himself before ordering French toast with a side of bacon. The waitress’s simple query of her trade had sent his mind spinning into philosophical exploration. “What do you want?” It is a basic question we should be asking ourselves every day, followed up with a practical response. The largest selling book in the history of the world, the Holy Bible, preaches to us: “ask and you shall receive”. That may hold true today with the French toast and bacon but not so much for the request for peace and fulfillment. He had read in one of Napolean Hill’s transformational books “to get what you want in life you needed to transcend ego and completely forego wantonness”. Sitting at breakfast, with a full day’s chores ahead, letting go of wanting seemed destructive. The universal truth with humans is that after they have obtained what they want they immediately move on to their next desire. What if your mind became so still you were motionless and wanted for nothing. He started applying butter and syrup to his breakfast and peeked into the malaise of a life that would have him wanting for nothing.
After consuming an unhealthy breakfast, he was off to start putting a dent in the day’s “to do” list. The Sojourner Truth Library was his refuge on a steamy, sweltering summer’s day. ‘Who didn’t want to be outside or at a watering hole of any sort?’ he asked himself as he found his hiding space amongst the stacks. A mid aged woman was one of only a half a dozen people scattered amongst the vast palace of thoughtful silence. While others, on the outside, plotted summer moves there were a few choosing to get their stimulation inside surrounded by cool air and Candide. The two strangers remained focused on what was in front of them without contemplating another option. The bibliothèque was hovered in the kind of quiet that was not for those who find themselves to be easily distracted. Initiating conversation can be looked upon as a sign of rudeness, or worse a lack of tac. The State University college campus was closed for summer classes due to construction projects leaving the small smattering gathered alone with their endeavors. ‘Do you attend this college,’ was the first sound echoed in hours as he got up to depart. “No, I attended an out of state college years ago, graduated in 2010. I am here working on various business projects. It turned out she was a seasoned writing coach and motivational speaker. ‘This is an exciting time to a writer, the man chirped in between listening to lines of her resume. Did you always have a clue as to what you wanted?’ She stared over several institutional manuals in front of her displaying a gracious spiritual smirk. “I figured out what I wanted a long time ago and I went and got it.” Of course, like the words the fabled jazzman Joe Jackson so eloquently laid down over his saxophone: “You can’t get what you want, until you know what you want.”
The first thing we all want in life is our mommy’s love. Over the course of our lives, we converse, mostly to ourselves, in terms of what we want as we start developing into an adult. We want to be wealthy. We want to live in a glorious location and be embraced by throngs of distant admirers. In our youth we want for wealth and glory. We imagine once we have an abundance of those two, we can now pay any price, and justify all means, to get what we want. The first stage of our wanting is all about survival. Do we go to bed with a full tummy and a roof over our head? As children we want a fair chance with family, authority, and education. Below the broad scope of wants are the simple human drives of nourishment, sleep, and sex. We want a steak for dinner, we want Mrs. Smith to be our teacher, we want another person to fancy us, and we want to reciprocate. These are the obvious early wants and needs. We learned quickly that we get some of the things we want. We get tired of familiarity and quickly set our sights on the next conquest. The young lady in the library was well past the stage of wanting dolls and lollipops for Christmas. “I was clear from my formative years that I was going to be a writer and a teacher of some sort. I wanted an independent career leaving the option for a family open, I still want both.” After that the choices come down to what career, which spouse, where do I live. A bit of terror creeps in ‘what if I live to be old and haven’t achieved what I wanted out of life? Is wanting so much, or dreaming so big, setting us up for personal disappointment. The last person you should ever want to let down is yourself.
The man packed up his thoughts and headed out into the July haze. As the sweat poured down his forehead, he headed to his car contemplating what had been took and what was left for the taking. “I knew what I wanted when I was a teenager, and I went and got it,” the young lady’s word still echoing in him. The young lady had convinced the old man that she was way ahead of him. When he was in his 20’s he was sure he wanted everything but doubted he was really looking for anything but an easy ride to the top. The dreams were of great material wealth, big houses, trophy girlfriend, and a whirl wind life full of fame and fortune. If we are fortunate enough to stay healthy and afloat we spend 35 prime years collecting and competing. At 60, we have no choice but to ask ourselves how we did. Did we get what we wanted? What happens in this place that I was sure I would never accept: old age? The focus moves from specific collectible items to practical nonmaterial virtuosities . I want my family to thrive beyond myself. I want the world to become a better place. I want to leave something behind. The material things become less titillating in the older years, as we cast judgments upon our choices we made throughout our lives. Did we do justice to the hand we were dealt? How did we recover from the bad decisions we were able to admit as much. Later in life we can’t help but look around and ask ourselves ‘did I get what I wanted? Is there anything left?’ We alone get to evaluate ourselves on how we played the game within the rules we set for ourselves.
When we are coming of age, we are trepid about the future. Will we get what we want first has to become “what do I want.” In our formative years we position ourselves to make a mark. We are all big fish in our tight communities of the tender years. We eventually will morph into minnows flailing about in the ocean. For most, the big dreams of youth are eventually exposed by the reality of our insecurities to blend in. We dream big and wake up one day in our 60’s with the clock ticking away the final minutes. We cannot go back and change the score. We can only play what the board dictates in the present. The things we wanted have found their place into dusty scrapbooks and the report cards. All the pictures and letters are nothing more than delusional images of our well-honed narratives. There is little left beyond acceptance and recovery. Looking in the mirror and facing our personal reality has a wide range of affects which presumably is the reason people are not comfortable with introspection. Reaching back to retrieve your wish list can create massive depression “I’m not what I thought I could be,” is a humbling pill to swallow. To the contrary, our reflections always present us with an opportunity to make changes at the spur of the moment. Either way it is vital that we keep turning the pages without dwelling on what we missed and focus on what we are set up to achieve. We can open the door to our own personal freedom, the kind where you find by letting go of the “if only” heading untethered into tomorrow.
It was exactly a week later the man was back to the Sojourner Truth Library to finish a short story. How does our story come to an end making some sort of efficient point? Would the young boy of his youth be content with the moment he had got to? As a survival mechanism humans tend to make past narratives suit their own heroic journey through life. It is out of necessity we learn to forgive ourselves with the promise of doing better tomorrow. The reality tells us the hourglass is headed for an end of our stories that is undetermined until it is. In the meantime, we can only be practical about where we are, from there we can continue to adjust our want list. The library was again creating the kind of silence that only an abandoned palace of study and critical thought could. We are alone with our dreams of yesterday and the evidence that is our lives in the present. We are in constant negotiation with ourselves for our moral souls. Our once upon a time requests turn into pleas for forgiveness. In the end all we have is here and right now, the circumstances we built to get to the moment we’re in. For himself there was still so much more to come, so many more stories to tell. Today, when he entered the bistro he didn’t wait for the waitress to ask him what he wanted’ ‘I’m ready to order , ‘I’ll have the French toast and bacon.’
