Driven By Fear Or Desire?

Why do we desire what we desire?

Our lying minds surely know how to play a handful of tricks on us, one being to make us believe that we do things because we want to do them. But often times, fear, being the pushy little fucker that he is, is the one responsible behind the choices that we make in life. On the one hand, there’s fear, and on the other, there’s fear of regret.

People have kids because they fear that if they don’t, they’ll end up filled with regret for the rest of their lives. People get married because the prospect of being forever alone haunts the shit out of them. People follow the path that society has traced for them because they fear the judgment that could result out of daring to go their own way. Fear of not being accepted is never a good enough reason to do anything in life, but hey take it or leave it that’s just my stance on it.

Unfortunately for us, our minds are not the best future predictors. Unless you’re one of those crystal balls future telling gurus, it’s pretty damn hard to know with accurate precision how we will feel about the choices we’re making today in the long term. Now here’s the catch – we think we know how we will feel, but more often than not, we miss the mark, and by a lot.

Blame it on the double-edged sword that is our imagination. Relying on it to know how our future will turn out is a sure sentence to death. Disappointments run deep when our imagination takes us on a wild ride of future dreaming through rose tinted glasses. How many parents and married couples will think in silence and say to themselves "this isn’t what I thought it would be like. " It doesn’t help that it’s almost a social crime nowadays to admit that parenting sucks balls on most days and that marriage isn’t all that. At one point in time, we were convinced that we desired those things, right? But for what reasons?

Fear of regret won’t be of any help when the incessant demands of parenthood make you want to blow your brain. Fear of going broke won’t make you magically fall in love with your high paying corporate job. Fear of missing out on married life won’t give you the incentive to work on your marriage when shit gets real hard. That’s what happens when we convince ourselves that we want things out of desire, when really, we want them because our fear trumps our desire.