Always Wanting.....

Why is it that we always want what we can’t have? It doesn’t matter what it is. If someone says no, or don’t touch, or stay away from, that’s it. It’s all you want and all you need in the world. If you only had that one thing, then life would be sweet! It could be anything, a toy if you’re a child, a new expensive bag, a new car, or that someone who is off limits. Maybe they’re a friends ex or someone in a relationship. There are always rules and reasons for the things we can’t have. These little restraints that we walk around in making sure we stay in line. Don’t spend what we can’t; try not to have more than you need kind of lifestyle we’ve adapted to over the last few years. It doesn’t stop people trying though, and trying is a good thing. To get a better job maybe, to get more money to live the same lifestyle as those other people we see all the time who managed to avoid the recession all together.

The thing is though, I have conversations everyday with people who continual want more and more. Wanting it and chasing it so much that they don’t even have the time to enjoy what they have right here and now. They’ve made it to where they want to be but they’re still chasing something. Not asking if they really want it or whether it’s the rush of trying to get it that makes it seem so desirable. It’s the whole grass is greener mentality that seems drilled into society today. We all love a good chase!

                I think what it comes down to really are the rules that we live by every day. Wherever you look we are being told what to, what not to do, things that are expected of us, advice that we should be listening to. Restrictions are everywhere, which is why we have had such a rise in people doing TEFL courses and just heading off, because things here got a bit boring. Things over there are so much better, didn’t anyone tell you?!

It begins in school. All these dreams and ideas that we think of, and the goals that we think we are going to be achieving, or the people we are trying to become. We are told to start thinking about this before we even develop enough to know what we want to do in our lives. So we just think about what we’ve been told and we go from there. We remember things our parents mentioned or the things teachers said we’d be good at and we rationalise from that and before you know it we’re on a path we didn’t even know we’d chosen. It’s the moments when you start looking back and really thinking about how you got here that you start to question what you have. This then makes what you don’t have so much more desirable.

 Life has become so restricted that I think there are rare little moments where we bend the rules or break them completely in order to just feel that rush, which even knowing what you’re doing is wrong it’s in that one moment that the decision is solely yours. It’s a way of taking a little bit of control back because we don’t have full control.

Maybe it’s just human nature, I don’t even know. I don’t pretend to know or even attempt to understand anything to do with the way we are. I just know that as soon as I can’t have something, I want it so much more. It might be because I still have the same level of maturity as I did when I was in school. I look at things the same I think. I look at things as being good, or being naughty, and sometimes it’s fun to be naughty, and to get into trouble.

I have no idea when this will change or when I’ll actually grow up. I still refer to things by saying “yeah but when you’re a grown up”. I guess I never got told I was a grown up, or maybe you never feel it. I hope for the latter. I don’t ever want to feel it if it happens, when I become a grown up.

I’m lucky in some ways because I have seen enough people around me lose everything chasing that something else. I’ve heard the stories and walked down memory lane with them while they painfully sob wishing to turn the clock back. Those times when you’re alone and you realise everything you wanted the most, was always there, you had it.

It’s only when losing it all we realise what we had all along, and this is a lesson that has been taught for years, but it’s also the lesson ignored by most. No matter how many stories of woe you hear, you still go ahead and make the same errors in judgment, follow the same path others have taken. Keep trying so hard to get promoted, you lose the time to spend with your loved ones, and eventually lose them. Take a walk on the wild side and do things you know people around you would disapprove of, but it’s okay because they’ll never know! Even take a gamble on that someone that you shouldn’t. We all know you play with fire eventually you’ll get burned, but why are the flames always so inviting.