How do we know what we want?

I couldn't think anymore. There was so much that I didn't know that I was struggling to realize what I did. Trains passed by and I waited on the terminal with the rush of traffic on both sides. The sun glistened on the edge of my glasses. Maybe it was early programming that I was questioning, maybe it was my childhood. It was an unsettling feeling that'd been there for months brimming to the surface. My job, my education, and my idea that I understood the world became a question.

I'd always wanted to be a writer. Well, that's not true. The first thing I wanted was to be an NBA player, then a musician, and then with each interest lost, I would return to writing until that interest was lost as well. It turned out to be the only thing that I got good at. Maybe not the writing itself, but the thinking. I approached each new classic like a baseball player taking another swing. It seemed obvious that I would have to read everything there was to create something new. But I had nothing. Instead of a great new theory or style or some clever way of doing things, I had a profound sense of how small I was and how grandiose my dreams were. It's difficult to live with ambition. It makes its' own demands and you struggle to serve it. Then it's gone. You wave goodbye like so many other abandoned interests. I resented ambition until it bored me.

The passengers loaded onto a packed train and I found a seat by the window as others crowded around me. I just didn't know anymore. It was a horrible feeling. How does one continue without a goal in mind? How do you take a single step without a destination?

I'd learned to be other people throughout my career as a human. I suppose life forces you do that. I learned to sell myself, to sell other things, and the value of appearances. I learned that each shot you take, each song you write, and each passing page only amounts to a minor improvement in an amateur's ability. It's difficult to realize how much people practice their craft, how much a musician performing for thousands has practiced that song countless times. Life begins to seem like a series of fading illusions. You see these elderly faces move about, fixed to whatever identity has carried them this far. Who are they? When did they stop questioning everything and just live? If I could go back, I would have done things differently. But then I would be a different person. It's so strange to think how certain I was and how uncertain I am. There is this idea that you will come to some conclusion, that your head will rise above the water and you'll stop swimming for a moment. Perhaps that happens for some people, but the more progress I make, the more unclear life becomes.

Perhaps excessive thinking is the problem. The profuseness of choices makes one dull. Is action then the answer? To go to and fro, rushing about without reflection. That's how I felt most days until I rode the train, watching the still passing of the city, forced to think before being subsumed by its' chaos. So often we go through life not knowing what we want. Life simply happens and, before we know it, we're somewhere unexpected. What's the point in wanting if you never know what you're going to get? The fact is, we want things without knowing what we want. All we have is the feeling of absence with whatever we have. It is precisely the not knowing, the not having, that we wish to remedy through wanting. Wanting is peculiar because it always leads us exactly where it truly wants to go. If you seek fame, you'll obsess over your own perceived greatness. If you desire talent, you'll be bombarded and surrounded by more talented examples. And if you desire love, you'll hound after it until you discover others with a greater capacity for love than you ever imagined. Wanting begets envy.

Why do we want? If wanting is not knowing, not experiencing, or a feeling of absence, is there ever a solution? Wanting seems to be a product of evolution. It's what makes us alive, but there is also something deeper going on. If wanting is an experience of absence, it is more of a feeling than a piece of knowledge. We can't know what we want until we know how we feel. Feelings are difficult because they occur before you can decode them. You must reflect on them before you can be in tune with them. Unexamined, they compound and create new feelings. Instead of sharing a laugh, you could be in an argument or doing something you never intended, something you never truly wanted.

I got off the train in a tussle of human expectation. People marched with a fixed purpose across the platform and scattered when they hit the streets, all off to their individual appointments. I felt somehow more alive than usual, noting the slight chill in the wind. I would soon be back on that train, watching the dim structures glide by as they did, immovable, present, as if I were truly going somewhere.