Complex Numbers

Magic Want

In my life as an adult, I've never done anything I didn't want to do.

Now, before you call bullshit on that, let me explain. It's a matter of framing.

Let's talk about a dirty toilet, for example. As I suspect is the case with most humans, you don't enjoy cleaning the toilet. But let's further say that you can't afford to pay a servant to do it for you, and you're unable to trick your kids into doing it, but there it is, a toilet, in your house, and it's got... stains... in the bowl, and maybe on the seat, too.

You want a clean toilet, but there's no one else who can make it clean; consequently, it stands to reason that you want to clean the toilet.

I mean, if you didn't want to clean the toilet, you wouldn't, and you'd decide that you can live with a dirty toilet, after all.

You can apply this to anything in life, at least anything that's a conscious decision. (Though there could be an argument about exactly what constitutes "consciousness," I'm not wading into that quagmire in this entry.) A college professor assigns you homework; you're not thrilled about the idea of doing homework, but you would like to graduate. The dog begs for a walk; it's 20 below out there and windy as hell, but you wouldn't like the dog to pee in the house. You run out of liquor, and you don't particularly feel like going to buy some more; but you want liquor, so you do so.

Maybe when you're a kid, things are different. Sometimes you do what your parents say, even if you don't want to. Or maybe there are things, as a kid or an adult, that get forced upon you whether you like it or not, but in that case, you're not consciously doing something you don't want to do; you've been thrust into a situation you didn't want to be in, which is different.

Now, you can, if you want, choose not to see it that way. You can frame it as "I don't want to clean the toilet." But that's how you end up resenting things in life, and that's no way to go around.

So I've never done anything I didn't want to do.

My problem is actually the polar opposite of this: I very often don't do the things I do want to do, like decluttering the kitchen or going to the gym. I know I want to do these things, and others, and yet, somehow, I don't get around to them. And that's a problem I haven't figured out how to reframe, yet.

Or maybe I just don't want to.