2006-01-26
Cravings are for Losers
Some monks and gurus say that you're supposed to crave what you have to be truly satisfied. And really, it doesn�t matter who said it because it's pretty basic logic. Sheryl Crowe said when she sang that ridiculously moaning song about how �if it makes you happy, than why are you so sad?� When you really have what you want, you�re not a sad person because it�s impossible to be sad if you are deeply satisfied and happy, right? Unless you are clinical and I REALLY don�t want to go there because it�s a lot too close to home. What with me always keeoing one foot at the door of Institutionalization and all. So pretty much, it does follow that when you deeply desire the things that you already have, then you are a shinier, happier person and REM will sing songs about you.
The logic in the idea that being truly satisfied with regard to your desires results in your being inches from self-actualization and bliss makes sense.
Unfortunately, it�s a huge clich� and it�s not exactly true that if you want what you have, you�ll be happy. And seriously? If you think I am talking about iPods, Mercedes S-Class vehicles, and Barbie Dream Houses, I beg you to quit reading. You�re going to be arrogantly thinking that you already have this shit figured out. You don�t.
But you�re lucky to be so ignorant.
...
I craved what I now have and let�s go to the video replay:
I craved to be living someplace a little exotic. Who knew about sewer roaches?
I craved to have a dog. Puppies pee all the time. Who knew?
I craved to have a job that is with a company that is good to the world. I am broke as hell.
I craved to feel pretty. Mercifully, I have no complaints here. I am adorable.
I craved to find myself. It took WAY too long and all this thinking is really pissing me off.
So it follows that I should be a super-satisfied person, right? I mean technically, since I have what I wanted, I should wake up everyday with a mega-watt smile and a heart just bursting with the possibilities of a new day.
But that�s not right.
I normally wake up and want to throw my alarm clock at the dog, who is normally whining to go outside.
I wake up and curse my way into my robe to take the dog out and then curse my way back out of my robe to take a shower in the shitty stand-up shower that only a person who is as short as I am can enjoy comfortably.
I continue with general unpleasantries until I am in my car when I actively begin to curse again. I can't stand morning shows on the radio and while I love my NPR, I can�t understand what is UP with the gross dental-work noises and throat kind-of gurgling that happens when Carl Castle is speaking.
What I'm getting at is that I really respect that I had a plan of what I wanted, emotionally and spiritually and physically (I�m not a gigantic fat-ass anymore, praise BE). I�ve grown up in ways that I didn�t even realize I needed to grow up. I mean, I was so clueless as to my inabilities to function in relationships and at jobs and generally in anything like an interpersonal relationship that I didn�t get that I needed to grow up.
I started to see that really clearly, and thus the active pursuit of self-improvement was begun.
Which is great and all but now I feel like I have the things that I desired. I have confidence. I have grounding. I have, dare I say it� patience.
And I am sort of bored to shit.
I�ve been going through these flash backs of being the center of attention, of being Rock Star Sarah to my grad school classmates. I am flashing back to the days not too long ago when I went to work all day and then worked out and then went to class and then went out for drink specials and then went to Rakers� house and bitched at him for an hour before going to bed.
What happened?
When did I decide that I wanted to come home and do the dishes? Why did I ever pursue not drinking every night and smoking a pack of Camel Lights every day? What was I thinking when I felt a longing for the commitment and constant companionship of a dog?
And I ask those questions to be funny, you know� because I really LOVE that I have a quiet life where running, reading, and reality TV are the main things that I want to be doing if I am stuck doing something that isn�t very interesting. I love it because there was a long time when, if I wasn�t doing something very interesting, I would wander off with the task unfinished and with a mission to wreak havoc. The worse I could make a situation, then the more interesting it would be and the better challenge it would be when it came time to fix it.
After every flashback, I often get up and look in the mirror now and get a little crushed out on myself. I�m way over being destructive.
But I love that feeling of really understanding who I was, what was going on, and what changed or grew, to make me who I am. Which is another gay-ass clich� but deal with it. I�m trying to prove a point without having to surrender that I�m not saying anything that hasn�t been said before.
Like I don�t know that already.
Hello?
Why do you keep thinking that I don�t know how dumb I sound?
I totally know it and I do it on purpose to throw you off�..
Duh�..
Okay, get to it, right?
I got what I wanted and for awhile I was thinking that maybe I expected too much. Like, I thought I would suddenly be
Mature.
And therefore completely capable of handling everything really well.
I got evidence that I am completely capable of getting what I want, and not in the tantrum-throwing, histrionic way unless I need a last resort. I guarantee you that you may think you�ve seen a tantrum but you haven�t. I could take the show on the road and make millions; MILLIONS I tell you, teaching people how to have an effective fit. I was a fit-force to be reckoned with and really can�t expect to suddenly be a model of patience and fortitude in sucky situations. I don�t think that I would behave the way I used to � being a destructive nightmare of dripping snot and hitching breath that inevitably led to the hiccups and the feeling sorry for me and me getting whatever stupid, meaningless win that I wanted.
It�s really a LOT of work and you have to be in top shape to pull of a sweet meltdown.
�
More recently, I got over thinking that I had too high of hopes and started thinking that I got what I wanted and I didn�t want enough. My salary is at least enough of a joke to make you laugh while you cringe, unlike my living situation which is kind of nauseating. No scratch that. It�s a cruel karmic joke.
But better stuff and mo� money aren�t what I am really what�s missing. I can move. I�ll make more money really soon.
Where I effed up making a checklist of Things to Make Me Happy, is relationships.
I left them off of the Big List and see? Here�s proof that my mother was right about making a list before you go to the store. If you don�t have a list, you will naturally forget something big. You�ll have to get back in your Bitchin� Honda and go all the way back hopefully what you want is still even available because of course you waited until the last minute because you're a dumb-ass.
Some days I do feel like I waited until the last minute and that it was a failed minute because now I�m sitting over here and I live in fucking paradise and I am down right lonely.
Sure, and a bigger apartment that doesn�t smell like the tom cats that roam the neighborhood. And maybe, you know, one where there aren�t skinheads around the corner. That would be great.
So seriously, I am lucky about a lot of the things that I desired and then got. In almost every way, I got what I wanted and was smart enough to want what I needed.
Theoretically, I self-actualized the shit out of myself. I�m like, the gold medalist in self-actualization, the World Champion, the Legend. In the self-actualization Hall of Fame?
I have a whole room to myself. My inroads and accomplishments earned a fucking ROOM all of their own.
But after this latest bent of thinking about what happened when I moved out here�. Now I am convinced that the only way to go about this whole thing of really, deeply loving yourself is to understand that there is no end-point. There�s not a destination to the fulfillment of desire.
I�m thinking that the craving and the learning and the incorporating the acquisition of a formerly-craved thing?
You never get to Successville, USA. Not in your relationships, not in your refinement of your lifestyle, not in your job� if you do get to the end of working on things to make them better, then you�re probably kind of dead inside, or very, very ignorant to the constant dynamics people and things around you.
I�m not saying that if you�re satisfied with your life than you�re stupid.
But I am saying that feeling good maybe ISN�T about craving what you have and then freaking out if, or when, you get it. I�m saying that feeling good is so much bigger and less-tangible than the clich� allows for in it�s definition of feeling good.
Craving what you have is totally great and I�m all for it. Seriously!
But having basically effectuated the deepest and most naked of my desires, I hope that I never stop refining those desires and wanting to take them deeper and spread them around to people who I love.
I am guess that now I have to grudgingly admit that I hope I never stop growing.
There are you happy?
I took a clich� and left it alone.
arizonasarah at 12:53 p.m.