What do I want?

What do I want? That’s almost as pow­er­ful a ques­tion as “Who am I?” For when we don’t express what we want in a true and heart-felt way — first and fore­most to our­selves — we lose a vital part of our joy in being exact­ly who we are.

Iron­i­cal­ly, in a soci­ety that over-val­ues indi­vid­u­al­ism, ask­ing this ques­tion can lead to inner dis­com­fort and con­flict. Is it okay to express what I real­ly want? Should­n’t oth­ers come first? Isn’t it self­ish? And from anoth­er more help­less or cyn­i­cal angle we may also ask, Can I real­ly get it? Isn’t it just illu­sion? Yet the ques­tion of what we want is built deeply into our natures, it seems, and sup­press­ing it may well also sup­press the actions that could lead to pos­i­tive ful­fill­ment. As a con­se­quence we may live some oth­er indi­rect and per­haps destruc­tive method for achiev­ing our heart’s desire. If I sup­press my desire for recog­ni­tion, for exam­ple, I may find myself act­ing out — becom­ing incon­sid­er­ate or con­trol­ling — and that gives me the recog­ni­tion, alright, just not in a healthy way. So the very effort to be “unselfish” back­fires. We want what we want — and we need to know what that is.

What do you want, real­ly? Is it some­thing you can say? Isn’t it what you are pri­vate­ly think­ing about as you trav­el from one sta­tion in life to the next? As you wait for the door to open this time?

At night, at col­lege when I was twen­ty years old, I would lie in my bed wait­ing for that door, sens­ing a “some­thing” that seemed to bridge an inner dark­ness with the out­er dark­ness of my dor­mi­to­ry room. The bridge car­ried me toward my dreams as I fell asleep. It was noth­ing at all, and yet it car­ried me through nights and days like a hand that point­ed, “this way.” And the hand appeared each time I asked myself the ques­tion of what I want­ed. I’m not mak­ing this up. This is not poet­ry. It’s just what happened.

Over the years, as I’ve done my coach­ing and con­sult­ing work, I’ve learned about many peo­ple, and I’ve lis­tened to a great many answers to the ques­tion. The answers did not nec­es­sar­i­ly come out direct­ly. Some­times, they came from actions or, more pre­cise­ly, the con­tra­dic­tion between words and actions. Some want­ed to be right. Some want­ed a rich sense of con­nec­tion and mean­ing, oth­ers sim­ply to belong. Some want­ed an order­ly life. Some want­ed some­thing safe and unthreat­ened. Some want­ed to express their love and to change the world in a pos­i­tive way. A few want­ed to be in con­trol. Oth­ers want­ed to find the truth, or live a gift. And a few want­ed to just get through this thing called life with­out too much trouble.

To acknowl­edge these inner desires often meant that a per­son had to become con­scious of liv­ing in con­tra­dic­tion, for the desire did­n’t match the self-image, who the per­son thought he or she was or should be. And that’s part of it, too, learn­ing to make use of the rec­og­nized con­tra­dic­tion. I remem­ber a client who had achieved suc­cess and pro­gres­sion in her career only to find her­self encased in what she called, her “emo­tion­al armor.” At work she was a war­rior, but in her heart she want­ed to be able to be her­self, a more vul­ner­a­ble per­son. Putting that con­tra­dic­tion in front of her, mak­ing that her real­i­ty and focus, became a hand point­ing her toward her own best wis­dom and inte­gra­tion of her­self with her work.

It is all too easy to put aside these things you want, to hold them sep­a­rate, to hide them with­in an adopt­ed per­sona. If you do that long enough, the true heart one day finds itself sur­round­ed by wire and you become a qui­et but rest­less per­son. Your heart becomes mere­ly a secret yearn­ing you have learned to pass by as you ride the train from what­ev­er is here for you today to what­ev­er might be there for you tomorrow.

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