What Next When You Don’t Get What You Desire

Not Getting Your Wants

What you can’t do without isn’t what you don’t have but what you desire and want. Trust me, if you couldn’t live without them, you wouldn’t be alive reading this piece. What you can’t do without aren’t those things you don’t have now and are chasing, so slow down. Don’t feel getting your wants will prepare all life’s tables or even turn all.

You can’t do without water, oxygen, family, community, good health, work (not job; there’s a difference between work and a job. People look for jobs though jobs are scarce, but there is work. Don’t ask me to tell you the difference between the two. That’s like asking me to tell you the difference between potato and pringles), and above all God.

You got all these, but somehow your mind and desires insist that you can’t live without all the other stuff you crave. We are all guilty. What you can’t do without is what you can’t let go, not what you don’t have. Ever heard of the trappings of luxury? I call it the treachery of comfort.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our ancestors had no houses, no cars, and no phones. They roamed the jungles like other animals and ate whatever they could hunt and gather. Now, we have all the things they didn’t have, we are more comfortable, but are we more relaxed?

Things like phones, cars and planes were meant to save us time in movement, that is, we can make a journey that took them months in just minutes or hours. What have we done with the remaining time gained? Do we relax?

Haven’t we become busier than they were even with all our time and energy-saving gadgets? We still worry like them, in fact, even more than they worried. We are still restless, anxious and scared because we think we can’t do without things we can actually do without.

Not Getting your Wants or Desires Never Leaves you Dead

If you are alive right now and healthy but there’s something you don’t have and it makes you miserable, sad, anxious and apprehensive, free yourself from it, let it go. If having it were a condition for your life you’d be dead by now. It could be pursuing a relationship with a particular person, or a dream job, or anyone or anything, just free yourself.

Everyone Has A Different Timeline – Jennifer Mailly

So, work hard, look for the good things of life, enjoy as much as you want, just remember that getting those things will not make your life better than it is now. At worst, they will gratify your insatiable cravings and leave you panting for more.

Human beings, according to Morgan Freeman in the movie Lucy, prefers HAVING to BEING, and that’s a problem. So, here is the deal for all of us:

We must imitate Paul, the apostle:

“Not that I complain of want: for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” – Phil 4:11-13 (The Bible, RSV)

Never feel miserable after doing your best and not getting what you want.

Reverend Fr. Oluoma