Most people, if you asked them what they want, would rattle off a list: a better job, a nicer apartment, to lose weight, to gain weight, to go to the Maldives. The list feels like what they truly want. Like a self-portrait made of desires.
But the uncomfortable truth is that a lot of what's on our list wasn't actually generated by us. It was handed to us by adverts, by the experiences of your colleagues, by what our Instagram page surfaces at the point where we're feeling insecure.
Our wants run on borrowed desires. You scroll past someone else's bedroom renovation and suddenly, your bedroom is inadequate. Before you saw the image, your bedroom was fine. You too were fine and not over thinking about all the parts of your room that need renovation at all.
Genuinely wanting less, and not as an act of self-denial, often begins when a person starts noticing the subtle changes. They catch themselves mid-want and begin to question where the want truly came from. The more honest people are with their answers, the more their list of wants begin to shrink. Not because life gets smaller but because they are stripping away wants that were never really theirs to begin with.
On the flip side, we tend to think of fulfilment as something that arrives when our list is finally complete. When we've gotten the job, the summer body, the fat bank account balance, the experiences. We imagine fulfillment as a destination. A stable place where we enter once we've accumulated enough.
But that's not how it works and many of us must have come to this realization. We've arrived at several things we once wanted and it was good, maybe even great. But the feeling was also short lived.
What wanting less reveals is that fulfillment isn't a destination. It's more like being content with what is already here, rather than treating the present as a waiting room for the future.
This is not a comfortable thing to accept because it means your fulfillment isn't out there. Your fulfillment isn't in the acquisition or achievement. It's in how you're relating to your life right now with what you currently have. This is harder in many ways because there's nothing to point at, no finish line to cross, nothing to buy.
This doesn't mean that when you want less, you stop growing. Or that because you want less, you'll become someone who accepts mediocrity, someone who never reaches, someone who just sits on the couch eating biscuits and calling it enlightenment. Desire and growth are two different things.
One can grow all round; in skill, in character, in relationship, in understanding, without being in a state of chronic dissatisfaction. In fact, those who grow most sustainably tend to be the ones who enjoy the process rather than endure it for the reward.
As a triple qualified student nurse (winks), I've always wanted more. Right from when I joined the race, I’ve always been foraging for something more, something better, something higher. And now that I'm closer to the finish line, I just can't stop thinking of the fact I've basically been breezing through this aspect of my life. An aspect I won't get back. But luckily for me, it's not too late to stop going through the motions and actually enjoy the process, however exhausting it may be.
At the end of the day, wanting less is an act of discernment. A willingness to look at the pile of things you think you need and ask “which of these things are actually mine?” Which of the things on the list would actually change the texture of your days if you had them. And which of them are just borrowed needs?
When you start asking these questions, the pile shrinks. The things left, which are what you
genuinely want for yourself, are a lot more achievable and satisfying. That's what wanting less reveals about fulfillment: that it was never as far away as the wanting made it seem. This simply means that we all have to set our priorities straight and watch the magic happen.
This post was written in response to the #kiss prompt for the week which can be found here.
Images used belong to me, except stated otherwise.
