The Threat of Wanting

I had a interesting moment the other day….For whatever reason I started to think about the expression “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Always a stupid saying I thought, but I when I actually thought about it, something hit me like a ton of bricks. Maybe it hit me because this is the very thing I have been working on recently – or at least it is related.

The constant struggle is to stay in the present and enjoy what it is, instead of laboring about the past, fretting about the future, or anticipating the future with great impatience.

So how does the expression fit into this. I realized the vicious circle that this expression implies. I will go through this in point form to save time:

-you want to cake

-you get cake

-you want to eat cake

-if you eat cake you don’t have cake anymore

-but you got cake because you wanted to eat it

-if you eat cake you will want cake in the future and may wonder when it will come again

-thus you can not enjoy just having the cake, or eating it

Ok, that is a very rough sketch or still what I thinks is a far overused expression, but the ramifications are real (even though my point form psychological sketch was not great). We can not at the same time want something and consume it in complete happiness, for if we want we will already be thinking about the next time when we should simply be enjoying what is.

Let’s move to a more common concern, money. If you constantly want money to buy things, you are at a crossroads, for if you spend the money you need to get more in order to spend more, so that you can buy more…. But if you don’t spend you have put the money to waste.

The problem does not lie in attaining money, spending money, or saving money, for these are all things we will do. The problem is if we have a desire to want more. In Western society most of us do. We are constantly searching for something to purchase, to increase our status or keep up to our peers.

This is a vicious cycle. By always looking to the next purchase we don’t get the full enjoyment of the now. I should point out that I am not talking about instantaneous (or short-term) enjoyment something new may bring us, for we can definitely experience a short-term high from acquiring a new toy. I am talking about a lifestyle where in general we feel unfilfilled and we seek to fill that void with new purchases, new partners, new experiences, and new places. We aren’t realizing that by doing this we are perpetuating the problem. The more we seek to fill the void (with these short-term highs), the bigger it gets.

The more we try to become the same, the more we feel different. The differentiated we try to feel the more we realize how similar we all are.

Ironically, the solution is simply a change a mind frame and not circumstance. We can’t fill the void with the external, but rather we have to appreciate the external in the present moment (which of course is internal). We must live in the moment and by doing so we appreciate what we have and will inevitably be working towards a better future. But this future does not enter into our mind frame. By enjoying and doing things we enjoy in those moment our future is set.

This could take years to implement or it may take a split second. But until you stop and actually see what the present moment holds, you will see nothing for what it is, and you will never find peace because you are at odds with what is.

The strange thing is, on the surface you won’t know difference between someone who implments this and someone who doesn’t.  They both may do all sorts of the same things and have loads of interesting experiences…the only difference is how they feel on the inside.  One is empty and trying to fill a void, the other is happy and adding to a mountain of great experiences.