We are not ready to receive the things we want.

Just something to keep in mind...

I often view psychology as a kind of relational physics that operates a lot like billiards. Which is to say that I view it more as a concrete set of principles than as a theoretical framework.

With that in mind, I ask you to consider the following, not as a “new-agey” idea, but as a kind of billiards diagram:

Do we ever actually want what we want — or do we get attached to (and affixed within) the state of wanting that thing?

I mean, it feels nice to drive towards the horizon or direct your gaze in its direction, but we can never actually get there.

Think about it: the whole reason we ever come to want something in the first place is because we've gotten accustomed to not having the thing we want.

If we had access to that thing — or to the feeling that we think that thing would bring us — then we wouldn’t be wanting.

Not having the thing solidifies the absence of that thing as part of the way we visualize our lives and ourselves. It becomes a given, almost like a hard law of nature, that this thing lies somewhere beyond our grasp.

The distance between us and the thing becomes… fixed, just like the distance between you and the horizon stays fixed no matter where on the globe you might be standing. Even when you can’t actually see the horizon, the distance is automatically assumed.

Without noticing, we slip into a sense that we must not worthy of the thing we want.

And — this is the point I’m driving at — if that thing were to land in our lap over the next five minutes, we would either be inclined to prevent it from reaching us outright, or we’d sabotage/undermine it once we attained it.

There's a cliché/truism that says “we’re afraid of what we don't know.”

If all we know is deprivation, then actually having whatever it is we crave will feel scary — so scary and alien, in fact, that we’ll unconsciously do things to keep the actual thing at a distance so that we can stay within the realm of wanting, because the wanting is the only thing we’ve ever known.

Which is not to say that people can’t and don’t legitimately achieve things, or that they don’t cross great distances to do so. But they tend to undo internal knots on the way there, which isn’t visible as whatever external changes they bring about in their circumstances.

I think we have to be careful in the way we visualize ourselves as being perpetually in pursuit of things (or even in pursuit of things on an intermediary basis). I’m not suggesting that it helps to visualize our pursuits or “goals” as being so far away that we can never reach them either — but that getting “there” requires a shift in perspective. If we begin to recognize that we’re already standing at a point that was once the horizon point for where you were previously, then our understanding changes radically. A distance that once seemed insurmountable collapses.

But if we don’t do that, then we abandon ourselves to an eternal wanting. A state where we think and say and act as if we want something, but where we subliminally move away from that thing.

In fact, whenever we stop and ask ourselves “Do I really want ____?” we suddenly get a bird’s-eye (if still clouded) view of our own situation. We can see ourselves stretching our arms out towards the thing we want while we simultaneously flex our muscles in an effort to hold ourselves back.

Just something to keep in mind. 

Needin’ is one thing / and gettin’s another

<3 SRK