wanting
an existential musing
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
-The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
To want is to be human, but I often find myself asking, am I stupid to want so much?
I ask myself this question seriously on a daily basis.
I know this question is not unique to me.
When I was younger my parents would always tell me I could be anything I wanted.
I know this paternal sentiment is not unique to me.
To a bright, young, black girl, the belief that anything is possible creates a sense of joy that radiates through my veins.
My body hums and thrashes with belief.
With wanting.
What if I want it all?
What if I want to be someone who has it all?
What if I want love, and notoriety, and a lifestyle that fulfills me, all at once.
As a black woman, in a slowly collapsing America, going on six months without a source of steady income, can I still emanate that naive joy?
Becoming an adult should not feel like weight, like a heavy burden.
“Well, that’s just life.”mumble the jaded Boomers, the complacent X’ers, the disillusioned Millenials.
Adulthood should feel like relief, like freedom, endless possibilities.
The alleged “I want it, I got it” mentality.
This is the optimism a post college student in the states requires
a rush of culture and opportunity billowing with vivacious energy
the ripest you’ll ever feel
And yet…
It’s been five years since Covid-19 and I am still processing the youth that was stolen from me.
I want more, I feel like I should be further along in life by now.
I know this feeling is not unique to me.
In the sweltering heat of summer society whispers, sculpts me into gentle assimilation with the number on the cake.
The fruit so ripe it falls from the tree, rotting in the harsh midday sun
How many more candles am I allowed to take?
Are black women even allowed to be selfish?
To want only for themselves?
My lineage is one of passivity and sacrifice, of taking just enough to survive, and providing for loved ones.
By the very maker of my bones my blood is servitude, to set my needs aside for the betterment of others. That’s what Grandma did.
That’s what Nana did.
That’s what Mum did.
I am not supposed to want.
I’m certainly not supposed to let people know I want.
That I am quietly desperate.
That I consistently yearn for that which I do not have.
This should be enough.
This home, this love, this lack of career, this undecided destiny.
Be grateful, express gratitude.
Do not want. Do not yearn.
Under the wrathful eyes of god.
Wanting is vain, juvenile, unbecoming.
Fulfillment in this world alone is unobtainable.
It is materialistic.
Do not be insatiable, gluttonous.
I have more than most people.
Be content.
I am divinely blessed, and that is enough.
This is a showering of guilt, of shame. Stepping on me to smear the confused waded up goop of my ambitions like gum across the pavement.
Am I content wanting nothing?
Not striving for more, not being “productive?”
Being grateful for what I have and nothing else?
Is wanting just a form of disguised control?
Is productivity a false sense of motion that floats me towards more desire?
Desire is the cause of all suffering.
Can I release control?
Can I be happy with myself either way?
Like being sick, being unemployed is releasing the capability to take care of anything but yourself.
It is an agonizingly uncontrollable period of my life.
To want cannot be the goal.
To want solely for materialistic abundance and financial freedom may ultimately make me feel more alone if I achieve it.
But I still want
I don’t want things
I want the ideas that things allow
My anxiety causes simple decision making to feel like fight or flight.
I wish my body knew the difference between receiving emails and a home invasion.
I want to not feel anxious.
To not feel like I’m just surviving.
But my mind is being driven by aversion, and anxiety.
Truly living is no longer wanting.
Living is accepting the moment for what it is.
Living is connecting with others.
Living is helping others feel.
The servitude of my ancestors continues.
The most I have ever lived has been through art.
Art in all it’s malleable forms.
Seeing, watching, hearing, and smelling. Tasting and wanting.
Experiencing the abstract views of someone who may be so different from me according to society, but on the inside all the same.
Still human. Still wanting.
Wanting is setting an expectation.
To be free of expectations is to feel the breath of life hit your chest and your heart viciously pumping blood. Is this happiness?
I struggle with wanting because what I want is for people to see me, to trust me, listen to my heart, and resonate with it.
Society can see one’s abundance.
If their wanting was reciprocated
And determine if this person is respectable.
I do not want to become jaded. To believe I have been spooned a lie.
So I keep wanting.
When a person begs for change the majority avert their attention.
This beggars wanting was not reciprocated in the past.
There is no more attention.
Without attention there is no possibility for abundance.
So I want. I want, I want, I want.
I want as much as possible now for fear of my wanting no longer being reciprocated in the future.
Everyday I wake up and scroll on social media.
Everytime I open a book and read a few pages I want to read more.
Every morning I get a text notification of the numerical figure in my bank account, and I want more.
I know this wanting is not unique to me.
I know I’ll never achieve everything I want in this life.
I know I’ll endlessly want
To me that is a part of life
What is living without desire?
And I’ve decided, I want to live.