if you try sometimes well you just might find

A Rolling Stones song surfaced on my shuffle during one of my recent lengthy drives. I never much cared for You Can’t Always Get What You Want. In fact, the Stones are a pretty recent discovery for me… but this song has kind of resonated lately.

I have a bit of a burr in my imagination right now. A petty emotional hiccup that doesn’t get cured because I can’t let go of it. And I started asking myself why I need to resolve this outdated thing… and if I even want it. Do I really need it in my present life? Because… when I get over the bruise to my pride, it really… doesn’t matter all that much.

On another level, I thought about how this week all I wanted to do was go home, watch television, and sleep. I needed to do something more active – like run so I can get my mileage back up for the Urban Improv 5K in a month. Or… write the story that keeps streaming and bubbling into my mind. But all I wanted to do was… nothing. And I guess I did get that nothing… but it wasn’t really… necessary.

Then, in the larger picture of the world that seems to have no immediate effect on my wishes to watch television or not… but I decide requires my daily attention and contemplation… I think about want vs. need. And what we get. Or, rather, what we try to achieve. There are a lot of frequencies shouting at us… telling us what we want. And how we should get what we want. No matter what we need.

 The American Dream. Whatever that means. I suppose that notion is forever tainted by the Engineer’s final number in Miss Saigon. But even that tells me what I should want as a full blooded (white) American is to go to college, get a job, get a husband, buy a house, have a few kids, a dog, a couple cars, a renovated kitchen, a green lawn, and the sanctimony of determining that life is the life for all. It isn’t my life. Sometimes I want one or two of those things… but I’m jaded enough now to know they can also be as much a nightmare as a dream. But that doesn’t matter. Because it is my right to possess it as an American… and my God given right to pretend it is the ideal of all humanity. And anything or anyone who stands in my way of that achievement is clearly… a money grubbing socialist or morally bankrupt degenerate.

And nothing in my mind makes less sense than that paragraph. Maybe it is a collection of extreme sentiments I condense for the sake of word economy. But… reaching for it… is that really wanting? And honestly, how much of that do we need? And when we are arguing about how taxes are going to interfere with the possession of such things… are we forgetting about what we need? Don’t we need roads? Don’t we need schools? Fire protection? Security? Yes, I want more money in my wallet. Yes, I want to use that money on things that make me happy with the distraction from the missing links of my American dream… or that stupid emotional clog in my brain. But… do I really… need it to survive? And honestly, do I need it at all to be happy?

Maybe the notion of want is as thin a substance as the inconstant reality of the American Dream.  I don't want to run this week... but I need to.  Because in the end... doesn't that make me yearn for those illusions of happiness less?  And isn't fulfilling that need, really, getting what I want?