"What if I can't get what I want? What's the point of thinking about what I really want if it isn't possible?"
The woman asked the question with hesitation and sadness in her eyes. We had shared a great morning with a group of about eight women, exploring the "coulds" and "shoulds" of our lives, and after lunch, I challenged them to consider, honestly, their wants. I lead retreats on "The Life You Could Have," in which we explore the many motivating factors impacting our decision-making. I assigned this group my usual questions to explore their desires, and this particular woman sought me out in the kitchen, where I cleaned the dishes from our Italian-inspired summer lunch.
Participants often assume that by the time they work their way through the long process of considering the potential and limitations on their lives, then the many rules and voices that direct how they feel they are "supposed" to behave, they will find it easy to consider what they want from their lives. Their full bellies from lunch soften their minds, tricking them into thinking, "What do you want from life?" will be an easy question to answer. But once I set them out for a time of reflection, inevitably, two or three quietly find me to ask several common questions as well as further guidance.
Everyone should know what they want, right? Theoretically, yes. But as we grow up, experience the varied stages of life, and begin to feel societal rules imposed upon us, we begin to ask ourselves less and less what we want because we start to believe in the futility of the question.
I find women especially struggle with this step in my workshops. As mothers, wives, and daughters, women feel pressured to sacrifice their desires in favor of meeting not only the necessities but also the preferences and whims of friends and family members. One time, when I led this workshop, I realized I could not remember the last time I picked where my family went out for dinner. Often, I choose what to cook at home, but it is based on the preferred menus of my kids. When balancing the tastes and fancies of a group of people, leaders often set aside theirs to negotiate a compromise with the rest of the group. Mothering requires the same strategy.
"What if I can't get what I want?" The woman's eyes pleaded with me for an answer. I tell my groups to consider limitless opportunities when thinking about what they want. I challenge them to blow the tops off their imaginations and let their minds run free with my assigned questions. I would love to ride a giraffe as I once did in my still-favorite dream from my childhood. I put that on my list. I'd also like to publish more books and make a living writing and leading workshops and retreats. That goes on the list, along with playing the guitar and having a villa in Tuscany. I would love to ride in a spaceship if I didn't hate tight spaces or air travel, so I include it.
But why add such things if you can't have them? I understand the heartache behind her question. She didn't mean wanting to own a purple elephant or bungee jump off the Grand Canyon's side. Several years ago, in a workshop I led for a church, we sat in silence at this same juncture in my agenda. An older woman suddenly interrupted the quiet with a rather loud "Oh!" We all stopped and looked at her, not with surprise or judgment, but holding an open space for her to elaborate, should she wish. She looked around the room at us and then said, "What I want is to grow old with my husband and have many more years together. But I can't because he refuses to eat healthy or exercise." She shared about her husband's chronic health problems and his continued behaviors that exacerbated those illnesses. In a flash, she realized what she truly desired; in the next, she knew she couldn't have it.
I ask my groups to consider honestly and without limit what they desire for their lives for a number of reasons. On the surface, I want people to rediscover the discipline of naming their aspirations and hungers. Growing up too often means giving up. We come into adulthood with long lists of dreams, but the realities of financial constraints, educational impediments, and health limitations knock items from our list one at a time. We sacrifice one dream because we choose another, or we give up one entirely due to a temporary barrier. We fear unrealistic hopes and unrealized dreams, so we stop dreaming altogether. But hope and dreams feed our souls and empower us to fight for ourselves.
Another reason we need to consider what we desire most in this life is to face the very question the woman posited to me in the kitchen that day. The Rolling Stones classic tells us, "You can't always get what you want," but follows with the important, "But you just might find, you get what you need." Whether or not they intended to, Mick Jagger and his bandmates sang a song about two essential stages in grieving a lost dream.
Every gain brings loss, and nearly every loss brings gain. We don't mourn enough in our society. We tell people to "get it together," "move on," and "snap out of it." We grow up hearing that "there's no use crying over spilled milk," which undermines our sense of loss for the cold milk we've wanted all day but can't have. We limit our allowed sense of loss to the death of a loved one, losing a job, a house burning down, or the death of a pet. Anything other than these and other "real" losses take their place on a list of importance that quickly diminishes.
We wrongly dismiss the many little (and significant) losses we experience daily, including lost opportunities. What's the point of mourning that which you know you can't have? Precisely because you can't have it. We have one life, and that life feels shorter with every passing year. In the years we walk this earth, we invest our time the best we can but cannot do everything.
Why want something you can't have? Primarily, to openly name the loss to give yourself space to grieve. Not allowing ourselves this space provides ample opportunity for negativity to creep in, such as bitterness, resentment, self-doubt, and insecurity. Without grieving, we cannot accurately reflect on the causes of the lost opportunity, so we fill the space with shame, imagining the loss owes entirely to our failure. Or we step into hating others, laying the blame unfairly on them. Grief gives us a chance to actually move on instead of pretending to.
Then, we can consider how we might get what we need. Naming my desire with the recognition of its impossibility allows me to see, instead, alternative paths or ways in which other events have already fulfilled my needs and more.
Finally, we consider what we cannot have because it can be fun. As children, the vast majority of us knew how to play pretend. I remember spending hours inside my own mind or sharing a created world with friends. The house never changed the layout, but inside our games it morphed from hospital to spaceship to zoo to fire station. A pinecone became a hand grenade in our day playing M.A.S.H., and our swing became a cot in the hospital ward for a wounded soldier waiting for Hawkeye to heal him. (If you don't understand those references, message me immediately so we can address this gap in your cultural education.)
In one of my all-time favorite books, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Madeleine L'Engle points out that children hear the story of Peter and Jesus walking on water and do not question the physics of it. Accustomed to flying through the air, swimming in stilts, and riding bubbles in their imaginations, children find no issues with the idea that Peter could step out and stand on top of the water along with Jesus. L'Engle points out that Peter's problem is not that he couldn't walk on water; it's that he remembered he couldn't. Once we stand too firmly in adulthood, remembering and embracing the thousands of rules we learned and created for ourselves, we lose the magic and wonder that fuels our dreams. That loss means we can't fully comprehend some of the greatest stories in human history. As a kid, I marveled at Ripley's Believe It Or Not, eagerly awaiting the next episode. As an adult, I have looked at the same content with too much suspicion and not enough wonder.
Playing pretend feeds us, and an excellent place to start is by answering the question, "What do I want for my life?" I understand the hesitancy and trepidation. We don't want to hurt by naming a dream whose opportunity passed us long ago. We don't want to risk feeling judged or stupid for wanting anything outside the qualifying and limiting boundary of "realistic." We push hard to "grow up" and leave too much behind.
Naming what we want may open the door to pain, but behind the pain comes healing. Behind it also might lie celebration. When we stop asking what we want, we block opportunities that are possible for us. We talk ourselves out of experiences and risks and shut the door on desires, creating walls where none exist. I delight in seeing people middle-aged and older, especially those 70 and over, discovering doors not only unlocked but standing wide open before them, which either they or the world had convinced had been bolted shut.
"What if I can't get what I want?" I heard the woman's question and, more loudly, the sad plea in her voice. I thanked her for her willingness to be honest with me and asked her to ask about it in the larger group. She didn't, but I volunteered for it instead without pushing her to lay claim to it. As the group began to share, more participants spoke to their losses, surprises, and celebrations they experienced during our time together. Some cried, all related, and a few made us giggle by setting aside their inhibitions to name their wilder and more outlandish wants. In my mind's eye, I saw Peter standing on the water, giddy at the prospect of achieving the impossible.
The Necessity of Playing Pretend