"I could eat ice cream eeeeeeveryday if I wanted to", I'm sure you've heard this spluttered by children when their parents deny them of a second helping. If it's not ice cream, it's candy, or some other addictive substance for children. You know you've grown up when you realise you can't have these things every day. Remember the childlike joy you experienced when you dug that spoon into a big bowl of your favourite flavour, and the sweet warm feeling that cold cold ice cream would give you, you tell yourself you could never have enough of the stuff. And surely enough, when you got older, and you had the means, and your parents weren't looking, you'd just help yourself to more and more. But one day you start feeling sick, as is often said, there can often be too much of a good thing, especially when having too much of this good thing can be bad for your health. As a child, you pretty much only do things because you want to.
Yeah, they're evil. Just give them to me so you won't have to deal with them.
You know you've grown up when you realise that it was just a want, you realise you didn't need it. And this is the difference between children and adults. Children, or if you don't have children, think your pet cat, or dog, will do what they want, sometimes, you are just powerless to control them in the face of it, a new toy on the store shelf, a pork chop on the dinner table, and they would get so upset if they don't get it, because they wanted it so much. But you as the adult, know what they need, and a lot of the time, these things are very far apart. As an adult, there are things you don't want to do, but you know you need to.
You want me to distract them again? You'll share this time right...?
Needs are universal. A human being needs very little to survive, water, shelter, food and warmth, but what we want is very telling of character. If you are a grown adult in the working world, I'm sure there are mornings where you have wanted to throw the alarm clock down the toilet, and just go back to bed. But you know if you do that, you'll be late for work, and if you turn up late, you won't have a job to work at for much longer. You know you need to wake up, so you do. You get out of bed with that dreary feeling, brush your teeth while looking like you'll fall asleep at any moment, get dressed, have breakfast, and trudge unhappily to work. You need to do this, you need to earn money for a living, to support yourself, to support the people around you. But you don't want to. And this dictates how you behave. You have a poor attitude at work, and if your day has gone particularly badly, you'll have a poor attitude to your partner or children, and generally, you'll be an unhappy person to deal with. Luckily, if you have an understanding partner, they won't pack their bags and leave you because you've had a bad day. They don't need to be able to put up with you, but they want to.
These two have a very clear idea of what they need and what they want
There's always a little unhappiness or anxiety that stems from doing what you need, but not necessarily want to. But you can blame these feelings on two things, your external circumstances and your personal attitude. One is very easy to change, one is hard. External circumstances are hard to change, anyone who has spent any amount of time looking for a job, or suffering with an unreliable car can attest to that. Your attitude however, can be easier to change, the ubiquitous adage that, beauty is in the eye of the beholder can have relevance to this as well, how you view the world shapes the realities of your world, fixate on the negatives, and you will be inordinately unhappy. Fixate on the positives, and you may not feel ecstasy, but you will be a little happier. The positives and negatives are all there laid out in front of you. What you focus your attention on is up to you. But on the other hand, your attitude can also be the more difficult to change, the heart wants what it wants, humans are irrational things, just think of the torment you brought yourself by falling in love with someone that didn't necessarily love you back.
How you see your world! Harharhar
We don't need fancy cars. What is a car, but a 4 wheeled conveyance to get you from A to B, and last I looked that was nearly every car out there, why this particular one then? At the same token, we don't need lots of money, it just allows us to do what we want. When we think we need those things, and we don't get them, we become unhappy. But in fact we just want them, really badly. I'm not trying to tell you those things are bad, but if there is unhappiness in your life, I have a strong feeling that it stems from this confusion. Want is a largely self centred thing, you want it because of how it makes you feel, but sometimes you need to do something because of what someone else wants. As any of you out there in a relationship knows, there comes a time (very early on) where what your partner wants, does not necessarily align with what you want. How you tackle this problem can arguably have a direct effect on how your relationship works.
As an example, I'm a typical gamer geek, there's nothing I like more than to unwind in front of the warm glow of a computer monitor chasing lap times or defending the earth from invasion. I also work a blue collar job that gets me home regular hours, so often I'm home earlier than my wife. I don't like to cook, I don't enjoy it, but on the days that my wife comes home late from work, I have two choices, keep aiming for that high score until she gets home to feed me, or turn the computer off and cook, or try to have things in some semblance of readiness by the times she gets back. I don't like to cook, so I don't want to cook, and I seem to be able to cope for long stretches without hunger, so it isn't a question of need, for me. But if my wife is working late, she's not going to be in the mood to cook for us both when she gets back. What I need to do at this stage is very obvious, even if I don't want to. So I do what I need, boil some 2 minute noodles, maybe throw some roughly cut vegetables in with some diced Spam, that would be the bare minimum right. She'd have to be happy with that.
The problem is, when you don't want to do something, that is virtually a guarantee that you don't do it well, and definitely not as well as you could. The experience is at least a little irritating to you, so you spend as little time as possible, and put in as little effort as possible because you'd rather be somewhere else, doing something else. You need to be wanting to do something to do a good job of it. I was raised in a Chinese family, and a major cultural facet is that you do everything to a standard, in this world full of conflict and liberality however, you can only do this for so long. Toiling away at a job where your work is unappreciated, or unrewarded is a prime example. I'm sure we've all been in a situation where we thought we were working towards something important for someone, only to have them turn around to show you a token amount of gratitude, or even take you for granted. We all remember how shattered we felt at those moments. This is the beginning of growing up. Sometimes you just need to be able to do something for the sake of it, not because you want to.
So this goes back to the idea that you need to change your own attitude. You have to want to do the things you need to do. Don't just fixate on the task, but think about why you need to do it, will this make someone else happy? Will this make other things easier? Is there some greater good that this is working towards? If there are positive notions to be found there, then what you're doing is in fact worthwhile, even if you don't necessarily feel like it at the time. On the other hand, you just need to do what you want to do sometimes. Growing up, and living the life of an adult, you start drowning in the sea of things that you need to do, and end up not being able to do the things that you've wanted. For the simple reason that it will make you happy, sometimes you just need to do, what you want to do.
So long as you do what you need to do first...
As an example, I'm a typical gamer geek, there's nothing I like more than to unwind in front of the warm glow of a computer monitor chasing lap times or defending the earth from invasion. I also work a blue collar job that gets me home regular hours, so often I'm home earlier than my wife. I don't like to cook, I don't enjoy it, but on the days that my wife comes home late from work, I have two choices, keep aiming for that high score until she gets home to feed me, or turn the computer off and cook, or try to have things in some semblance of readiness by the times she gets back. I don't like to cook, so I don't want to cook, and I seem to be able to cope for long stretches without hunger, so it isn't a question of need, for me. But if my wife is working late, she's not going to be in the mood to cook for us both when she gets back. What I need to do at this stage is very obvious, even if I don't want to. So I do what I need, boil some 2 minute noodles, maybe throw some roughly cut vegetables in with some diced Spam, that would be the bare minimum right. She'd have to be happy with that.
What... this is quality work for me!
The problem is, when you don't want to do something, that is virtually a guarantee that you don't do it well, and definitely not as well as you could. The experience is at least a little irritating to you, so you spend as little time as possible, and put in as little effort as possible because you'd rather be somewhere else, doing something else. You need to be wanting to do something to do a good job of it. I was raised in a Chinese family, and a major cultural facet is that you do everything to a standard, in this world full of conflict and liberality however, you can only do this for so long. Toiling away at a job where your work is unappreciated, or unrewarded is a prime example. I'm sure we've all been in a situation where we thought we were working towards something important for someone, only to have them turn around to show you a token amount of gratitude, or even take you for granted. We all remember how shattered we felt at those moments. This is the beginning of growing up. Sometimes you just need to be able to do something for the sake of it, not because you want to.
I'll need those reports Wednesday now instead of Friday, alright? Thanks
So this goes back to the idea that you need to change your own attitude. You have to want to do the things you need to do. Don't just fixate on the task, but think about why you need to do it, will this make someone else happy? Will this make other things easier? Is there some greater good that this is working towards? If there are positive notions to be found there, then what you're doing is in fact worthwhile, even if you don't necessarily feel like it at the time. On the other hand, you just need to do what you want to do sometimes. Growing up, and living the life of an adult, you start drowning in the sea of things that you need to do, and end up not being able to do the things that you've wanted. For the simple reason that it will make you happy, sometimes you just need to do, what you want to do.
So long as you do what you need to do first...
Wheee...!
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