I Wannt Selfish...

I don't want that = ? ~ ( I want that )

Few days back, I was talking with my friend about something - not sure what - but she mentioned that she really did not want to go. She said, I don't think that saying to you how much I don't want to go really conveys the sentiment. She said, I have the opposite of a desire, not the absence of a desire. She called it a dis-sire.

I thought about this for a while because the negation of something is not the same as its opposite. There is an "active" quality about wanting and there isn't the same "active" quality to "not wanting". The active nature of "not wanting" is communicated through tone and emphasis, not the words themselves. Lets say it "Wannt". e.g. From past three days I am eating rice, today I "Wannt" it.This concept of actively not wanting is more akin to repulsion or disgust than it is to the more benign "not wanting."

Sometimes, we are not sure of what we want, but we know what we "Wannt". So this is the thing that makes confusion many times. If you know exactly your wants then you can decide nicely. But if don't know your wants then you prefer to prune out "Wannt" part of it and leave with the subset remaining.

As we are talking about wanting something and Wannting few-things, lets take it to very personal level. Selfishness has become a dirty word AND an accepted defining characteristic of humankind. Why is that?

It seems to me that one of the greatest challenges in life is to figure out what I want. That is, to figure out what is to my benefit, what it is specifically, how to get it, etc. It seems hard to be purely selfishly motivated. The challenge of thinking of me, and only me, is making a decision on that criteria alone. Most decisions I make are based on a variety of factors, my interests of course included, and I suspect most people consider more than purely selfish variables.

PEOPLE are selfish, but I'm not. I think that's how most people understand the idea. I think that healthier way to think about it - and lose the pejorative connotation - is to understand that everyone has complex motives and interests, many of which include their own, perhaps exclusively. The statement: I have interests, desires and wants, and others do too; is probably more helpful than thinking that "People are selfish." It's also helpful to consider that people are struggling, constantly, to figure out and give shape to what they want, and think about how to get it. If we think of this as bad, we deny one of the core joys in life and the pleasures of ambition, competition and pride.



P.S. : This article has nothing to do with current placement scenario and people's decisions. Any resemblance is considered to be fictional.