The danger of not knowing what we want

The biggest obstacle facing our happiness in life is often we don’t know what we want.

We know what we don’t want — we are charged by fear, and so our energetic impulses are often aimed at making decisions to avoid what we don’t want (e.g. becoming homeless). We know there is suffering in the world so to dismiss such fears would be churlish. However we when we don’t know what we want we give our “non-choices” more power because that energy is not flowing towards what we’d love.

Everyone wants good things for themselves. It’s a given.

Crucially, we’re not skilled to ask ourselves what we want, as we’re told what we need. We are bound within resource-led thinking (see; Creativity as a pastime), staying safe to meet our basic needs. It’s easy to become apathetic to dreams and desires in this environment.

Naturally obstacles will appear when you go for something. But here’s the rub: obstacles will always appear regardless of a decision to play it safe. It’s just a case of choosing where to place your energy.

In his Harvard address to graduates, Steve Jobs said: “You’ve got to find what you love”.

The modern landscape facing young adults is both frightening and optimistic. More are spending longer in education, with no more skill in understanding of what’d they love for themselves. And why would they want to in the current climate! They are highly susceptible to the whims of an increasingly competitive market. But there’s an urgency more than ever to figure it out and empower new generations because old systems soon will not exist.

Everything is structural, always being in perfect balance.

Jean Houston best sums up with fuelling optimism: “So we have this enormous essence rising, which before was configured into very specific arenas, and now the arena is no longer defined”.

Everything is energy in flow.

#impulse #structure #skill #obstacles #choice #energy #focus #optimism #love #fear #balance #flow #happiness

Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash