do whatever you want

the resonance of wants / needs / highest good

my guiding principle for this week (this month, this year, this life) is: do whatever you want — and so far, I’ve been very happy with it.

why don’t we all do whatever we want?

because we don’t trust our wants. we don’t trust that what we want is what we need, nor is it what is truly good for us (and others, and society).

what we want seems self-indulgent, unpractical, uneconomic. if we give ourselves permission to do what we want, who’s to say that we won’t spend all day binging television, or playing boards games, or reading bad thrillers in bed? if we do what we want and give no rein to our desires, who’s to say we won’t abandon our respectable posts, lose all our money, horrify our mothers, wreck our relationships, and end up homeless on the street?

hence, in adulthood, we’ve given a bad name to wants. wants are for the undisciplined, irresponsible, and childish. being an adult means doing what we must do. it means making sacrifices. hushing our desires. so we sweep away our sheepish dreams and get real jobs — so we can make real money — so we can live in this real world.

but who is to say what is real? is the life before you not the only life you have? do we not all live in bubbles in our heads? is there a certain picture you can point at and say, this is the objective reality of the world? is reality not ephemeral and ever-changing? does its image not depend entirely on from where you stand?

and if what we do, and what we think we need is not what we truly want, are we not living half-lives? are we not wasting this ephemeral thing, that is life?

perhaps it’s a sign of the sickness of our society that we are so divorced from our wants. true, deeper wants — not momentary cravings for fading pleasures. deep wants are uniquely personal, yet also universal. we want expansion. freedom. possibility. connection. love. belonging.

but can we trust ourselves enough to believe that our wants could be aligned with our needs, aligned with our purpose, and aligned with the highest good we can create — in this life, in this world?

is it possible to find the overlap? the place of resonance — which is different for each person? to distill our wants down so much that they are the bone — the essence of who we are? and they can form the basis of what we need to live in this world?

the place to start is complete honesty with ourselves. peeling back each layer to examine:

what do I want?
what do I need?
what is my highest good?

and the place of resonance between the three.