Wanting

So there is no misunderstanding, this blog is about me, and only me. I am talking out loud to myself, not preaching or giving messages to others.

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
No, you can't always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need

The lyrics to an old Rolling Stones song go through my head on a pretty regular basis. It is a refrain I am familiar with both lyrically and experientially. It happens all the time to me. Sometimes I am the person experiencing the “no” and sometimes I’m delivering the “no.” Other times I am just witnessing someone not getting what they want. All three views are difficult.

I guess the reason I like the song is that it ends on a hopeful note “…but if you try sometime you find you get what you need.”

F and I had guests this weekend. We hadn’t been together for 4 months and we were looking forward to a reunion. For the most part it was very enjoyable. Good to be with one another, good to laugh together. But by the end of the weekend I felt sadness. I felt sadness for me, sadness for F, sadness for my friends. Things change, life changes, people we love change. People we love make difficult decisions that enhance their lives and we make decisions that enhance our lives. They are not always mutually beneficial.

One of my friends questioned if her attachment was wrong. Attachment isn’t wrong. Attachment is painful. That is the lesson of the Buddha. How do you let go of suffering? Let go of attachment. But it’s hard to do and it means not getting what you want. We westerners don’t have a lot of experience with that. We have so much and want so much more. The wanting grows. Even when the desire is periodically fulfilled, it doesn’t last. If we buy everything we want, manipulate everything we want, steal everything we want, we will be left wanting more, something newer, more attractive, a new itch to scratch, a new person to play with.

I’m looking at what I want and questioning why I want it, what will it do for me, what will I get from it, how long will I be satisfied with it? On more than one occasion I have wanted, wanted, wanted something, enough to save or sacrifice, or throw caution to the wind and get it for myself, only to cast it aside, sometimes the same day, as though the act of purchase itself was where the satisfaction was. Using it or consuming it had no relevance to satisfaction.

I am sorry to say I have done this in the past with lovers. Passion and sexual tension drove me to woo and court someone, only to find that the wooing and courting was far more satisfactory than the relationship I sought.

So what, if anything, is the moral of all this? Attachment is suffering, painful, and breeds disappointment and desire, which in turn breeds more suffering. It’s a ring of fire, and there is no way out but to step outside the ring. That’s frightening and painful in itself, but the promise from the Buddhas is that the suffering subsides.

Where to begin? Where I was left. With a sense of sadness that no matter what I wanted or was attached to it could not be fully possessed by me and would not satisfy my desire. Hanging on tighter won't get it. Letting go of it won't get it either, but it will make the suffering go away. I didn’t get what I wanted, but I got what I needed.