Do You Know What You Want?

StockCake

You beg for life, but you race towards death.

You march for freedom, but hide under oppression.

You want your liberties, so you steal them from others.

You want to be equal, but you are in the minority or so you say.

You yearn for individuality, but you are afraid to be different.

You want to be unafraid, but you are afraid of what will happen if you are.

You want to relax, so you speed through life.

You want to be loved, but spread the seeds of hate.

So think care fully, do you want your life, or do you want your death?

Do you know what you want?

Steve Hannity

Do You Know What You Want?

Despoina Apostolidou

 Your wants were learned from other people. 

Some of them can still become yours.

It sounds like the easiest thing in the world. 

You are the one doing the wanting, so who could know better? 

But wanting something and knowing why you want it are two different things, and the second is rare. Plenty of people spend ten years chasing a goal and only find out at the end that it was never really theirs.

The reason is simple. 

Wants arrive long before we are able to choose anything. 

As children we learn what to want the same way we learn to talk, by copying the people around us. 

We see what our parents praise. 

We see what gets applause at school, who is respected on our street, and what makes our friends jealous. 

By the time we sit down at eighteen to decide what we want from life, a lot of the deciding has already been done.

You can test this on yourself. 

Take the thing you are working hardest for right now, and ask whether you would still want it if nobody could ever know you had it. 

No photos, no telling anyone, no change in how people look at you. 

 

Some wants pass that test easily. 

Others go strangely quiet, and then you have to ask what you were really wishing for.

This is how a person ends up with one of the saddest experiences adult life has to offer. 

You work for years toward something, you get it, and then you stand inside it with a thought you can’t say out loud.

“This is what I always wanted. 

So why doesn’t it feel like mine?”

The usual advice is to forget what others expect and find out what you really want, deep down. 

The trouble is that there is no “deep down” of the kind this advice imagines. 

If you took away everything you learned from other people, your language, your taste, your sense of right and wrong, your idea of a good life, nothing would be left to do the wanting. 

There is no untouched version of you underneath, waiting to be found.

So we seem to be stuck. 

Our wants came from outside, and there is no pure inside to go back to. 

If that is true, how can any want be your own? 

And how can you be responsible for wants you never chose?

The Stoics worked on questions very close to this problem more than two thousand years ago, and their answer is more practical than anything I have found in modern advice.

in, Stoic Wisdom

Fortify yourself with contentment. 

It is an impregnable fortress. 

— Epictetus, Fragments, 138

We need very little to be happy

We don’t need much to lead a happy life. 

Whether a house is big or small, whether a car is luxurious or not, whether clothes are ordinary or expensive, they serve the basic purposes equally well. 

As Marcus Aurelius reminds us,

You need very few things to be happy. 

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.67

Look at what you have, not what you lack

We are unhappy not because we have too little, but because someone else has more. 

We are happy with our salary — unless we find out our peers are paid more. 

We are happy with the house we live in — until we visit a house that is much better than ours. 

We may have everything we always wanted. 

We may be perfectly happy with what we have. 

But then we come across someone who has more. 

Suddenly, what made us happy yesterday, makes us unhappy today. 

Yet, nothing has really changed. 

Epicurus warns us,

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. 

— Epicurus

We don’t pay attention to what we have. 

We ignore all the good things we have and long for things we don’t have.

Don’t dream about things you don’t have. Instead, think about the best things you now have and how much you would crave them if you didn’t have them.

 — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27.

When we are unhappy that we don’t have the latest of … (cars, smartphones, clothes, computers…), think of a third of humanity for whom having enough to eat today is their greatest joy.

Separate natural desires and desires of opinion

We need food and water to survive. We need shelter and clothing to protect us from the elements. When we desire these things, we are dealing with natural desires or desires of need. These needs are easy to satisfy. But there are desires that arise because we want these things, not that we need them. 

These are desires of opinion or desires of want. 

We falsely assume that we need them for our happiness. 

They are not always easy to satisfy.

Natural desires are limited, but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are traveling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless. 

— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, 16

 

Fix a limit on your desires

Consider your needs, not wants. 

Once you have done so, you know you have all that you need. 

There is no harm in having more, but there is harm in believing your wants are your needs. 

You probably have most of the things you hoped for when you were young. 

If you are still not happy, it is because your desires are a moving target. 

Every time you near the goalpost, it moves further.

Fix a limit which you will not even desire to pass, should you have the power. 

At last, then, away with all these treacherous goods! They look better to those who hope for them than to those who have attained them. If there were anything substantial in them, they would sooner or later satisfy you; as it is, they merely rouse the drinkers’ thirst.

 — Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, 15

1. Your desires seem attractive before you achieve them but lose their attraction once you do? 
2. Do things you bought last year thinking they would make you happy, make you as happy now as when you bought them? Or, are you thinking of something else that will make you happy now? 

Drinking doesn’t satisfy the drinker’s thirst. It only increases it.

The only way to be content is not to crave for more and more and more but to look at what you have and limit your desires.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. 

— Epictetus

Epicurus, often (mistakenly) associated with advocating fleeting pleasures, has this to say:

Anyone who does not think that what they have is more than ample is an unhappy person, even if they are master of the whole world. 

— Epicurus

Chuck Chakrapani

Instructions Before Visiting Earth

forplayday/iStock

In the event that you wake up

and find your soul separated from source

and manifest into material form, don’t panic.

Your condition is only temporary.

You have been selected for the opportunity

of human incarnation.

This 3D simulation is designed

to break up the monotony of eternity

by giving you a fully immersive experience

as a distinct ego identity.

Your body will serve

as your physical avatar

as you navigate a dense and dramatic reality.

There will be many distractions

causing you to forget your true nature and origin.

You will experience a range of emotions

from joy to loneliness to despair.

But remember – no matter

what trials and traumas you encounter,

your soul remains perfectly safe.

At times you may feel lost or afraid.

This is totally normal.

If you ever need guidance,

simply slow down your busy mind

and bring your awareness

to the quiet place

inside yourself.

On this planet, nothing is permanent.

People and things will come and go.

You will fall in love and form sentimental attachments

only to lose everything you hold dear.

So cling to nothing too tightly, even yourself,

and when it’s time to let go, let go with grace,

for nothing is owned, only borrowed.

As you walk among

the people on the planet,

try to be a good guest.

Tread lightly. Remember

that you are only visiting.

Don’t make a mess.

Listen more than you speak.

Give more than you take.

Don’t keep your soft heart

locked inside a glass cage,

protected from wear and tear.

You’ll never make it out alive

and time passes quickly.

So come back with some battle scars

and good stories to tell.

James McCrae

Hidden Patterns Controlling Your Life

wundervisuals/iStock 

The hidden psychological patterns behind 

the choices you keep repeating—and a 

practical way to recognize them 

before they cost you 

another year of your life.

There is a strange moment that happens in almost every life.

You suddenly realize that this is not the first time.

Not the first time you chose someone who made you feel small.

Not the first time you postponed the thing that mattered most.

Not the first time you worked desperately for approval.

Not the first time you promised yourself, This will be different.

And yet somehow, the same story appears again.

Different person.

Different job.

Different city.

Different year.

Same pattern.

This is one of the most uncomfortable discoveries a human being can make:

What feels like a series of unrelated events may actually be one story repeating itself.

Viktor Frankl spent much of his intellectual life asking a question beneath ordinary psychological questions:

What allows a human being to remain human when circumstances become extremely difficult?

His answer was not that we control everything.

We don’t.

His approach, logotherapy, emphasized meaning, responsibility, freedom of attitude, and the human capacity to step back from one’s immediate reactions rather than being completely defined by them.

That distinction matters enormously.

Because perhaps the greatest danger in life isn’t that you will make one terrible decision.

It is that you will repeat the same decision so many times that it starts to look like your personality.

You call it “who I am.”

Frankl would have challenged that conclusion.

And that is where pattern recognition becomes powerful.

Not because recognizing a pattern magically fixes your life.

But because you cannot consciously change a pattern you cannot see.

Here are seven patterns worth looking for:

1. You Keep Choosing What Is Familiar Instead of What Is Meaningful

The familiar has a powerful psychological advantage:

You already know how it feels.

Even when it hurts.

A person may complain about the same relationship for five years, yet feel strangely uncomfortable when someone finally treats them well.

Someone may hate their job but become anxious when a genuine opportunity to leave appears.

Someone may say they want to write a book, start a business, move abroad, or build something meaningful—and then spend another year preparing instead of beginning.

Why?

Because the brain doesn’t automatically ask:

“Is this good for me?”

Sometimes it asks something much simpler:

“Do I recognize this?”

Familiarity can feel like safety.

And safety can become a prison.

This is why people sometimes return to environments they consciously wanted to escape.

The old pain is predictable.

The new possibility isn’t.

Frankl’s philosophy introduces a radically different question: 

not simply What do I want? but What is this moment asking of me? 

The Viktor Frankl Institute describes meaning as something discovered through one’s response to a particular situation, including through creative action, experience, and attitude.

That changes the psychological equation.

Instead of asking:

“What feels comfortable?”

you begin asking:

“What is meaningful?”

Those are not always the same thing.

And sometimes the distance between them is the distance between the life you have and the life you keep imagining.

2. You Mistake Your Past for Your Identity

This pattern is quieter.

And potentially more dangerous.

You failed once.

Then you started saying:

“I’m bad at this.”

Someone rejected you.

You started saying:

“People don’t really choose me.”

A relationship ended badly.

You started saying:

“I’m just unlucky in love.”

You made a career mistake.

You started saying:

“I’m not the kind of person who succeeds.”

Notice what happened.

An event became a story.

The story became an identity.

And the identity began influencing future behavior.

Psychology has long examined how expectations and self-concepts can influence perception and behavior. But Frankl adds an existential dimension: 

a person should not be reduced to the circumstances that have happened to them.

Your past is part of your biography.

It is not automatically a sentence.

This distinction is crucial:

“This happened to me” is not the same as “this defines me.”

Imagine carrying an old photograph everywhere.

At first, it reminds you of something.

Eventually, you begin using it as evidence of who you are.

Then you stop looking forward because you are constantly proving the past.

That is how identity can become a cage.

3. You Keep Trying to Control What Was Never Yours to Control

This pattern produces enormous amounts of anxiety.

• You replay conversations.
• You wonder what someone thinks about you.
• You obsess over whether someone will approve.
• You try to predict every possible outcome.
• You read messages repeatedly.
• You worry about events that haven’t happened.

And underneath all of it is the same hidden assumption:

“If I think hard enough, I can eliminate uncertainty.”

You can’t.

There will always be things outside your control.

Other people’s opinions.

Other people’s choices.

Economic conditions.

Unexpected illness.

Timing.

Loss.

Aging.

Death.

Frankl’s philosophy doesn’t promise control over circumstances. 

Instead, it places emphasis on the freedom available in one’s response and attitude.

That is a much smaller freedom.

But it is also a more realistic one.

Try separating your life into two columns.

Mine:

My choices.

My effort.

My attention.

My boundaries.

My words.

My response.

Not mine:

Their approval.

Their behavior.

The past.

The outcome.

The timing.

The opinions of strangers.

You may discover something uncomfortable:

You have been spending enormous psychological energy trying to manage the second column.

And almost none of that energy can produce certainty.

4. You Confuse Being Needed With Being Loved

This one hides inside relationships.

You become the person everyone calls.

The fixer.

The listener.

The reliable one.

The person who never says no.

At first, it feels meaningful.

Then something changes.

You become exhausted.

Resentful.

Invisible.

And strangely afraid to stop.

Why?

Because being needed has become evidence that you matter.

This creates a dangerous equation:

If they need me, I am valuable.

But usefulness and love are not identical.

1. You can be useful and still be taken for granted.
2. You can be loved without constantly performing a service.
3. You can have boundaries without becoming selfish.
4. You can disappoint someone without becoming a bad person.

Sometimes the pattern isn’t:

“People use me.”

Sometimes it is:

“I have unconsciously taught people that my value comes from what I provide.”

That realization can hurt.

But it also gives you something extremely important:

A place to intervene.

5. You Repeat the Same Emotional Problem With Different People

This is the pattern that makes people say:

“Why does this keep happening to me?”

Different partner.

Same conflict.

Different boss.

Same humiliation.

Different friend.

Same betrayal.

Different workplace.

Same feeling of being overlooked.

Eventually, you may begin believing that the world is responsible for the repetition.

Sometimes it is.

People can genuinely behave badly.

Systems can genuinely be unfair.

Circumstances can genuinely be destructive.

But there is another possibility worth examining:

You may be selecting familiar dynamics because they feel psychologically recognizable.

Not consciously.

Not deliberately.

But repeatedly.

• Perhaps you chase emotionally unavailable people.
• Perhaps you avoid people who require vulnerability.
• Perhaps you never state your needs and then resent people for not meeting them.
• Perhaps you tolerate disrespect until anger becomes the only boundary you know how to create.

Pattern recognition doesn’t mean blaming yourself for everything.

That would be another psychological trap.

It means asking a more productive question:

“What part of this pattern is within my influence?”

That is where responsibility begins.

6. You Keep Waiting for Permission to Become Yourself

This may be the most socially acceptable form of self-abandonment.

You tell yourself:

1. I’ll start when I know more.
2. I’ll leave when the timing is better.
3. I’ll write when I’m confident.
4. I’ll speak when people will understand.
5. I’ll change when my family supports me.
6. I’ll become myself when everything settles down.

But life rarely settles down.

There is always another bill.

Another responsibility.

Another uncertainty.

Another reason to wait.

And eventually, waiting becomes a lifestyle.

Frankl’s emphasis on responsibility is powerful here. 

The Viktor Frankl Institute describes responsibility as closely connected with freedom: 

being “response-able,” capable of choosing one’s response within the limits of a situation.

You may not be free to choose every circumstance.

But you may have more freedom than you think over what you do next.

One page.

One conversation.

One boundary.

One application.

One decision.

One honest sentence.

Your life does not usually transform because you suddenly become fearless.

It changes because, at some point, meaning becomes more important than comfort.

7. You Keep Searching for a Perfect Life Instead of a Meaningful One

This may be the deepest pattern of all.

We are surrounded by messages telling us to optimize everything.

Optimize your morning.

Optimize your body.

Optimize your productivity.

Optimize your relationships.

Optimize your career.

Optimize your happiness.

Optimize your brain.

And eventually, you can become so obsessed with building the perfect life that you forget to actually live one.

Frankl’s philosophy points in another direction.

Meaning is not necessarily found by eliminating every difficulty.

The Viktor Frankl Institute summarizes his approach around three broad pathways: 

1. meaningful action, 
2. meaningful experience and relationships, and 
3. the attitude one takes toward situations—particularly circumstances that cannot be changed.

That is a profound distinction.

A meaningful life is not necessarily an easy life.

A meaningful life may contain: 

Grief.

Failure.

Uncertainty.

Sacrifice.

Responsibility.

Love.

Loss.

Growth.

Suffering.

The goal isn’t to create a life in which nothing hurts.

The goal is to build a life in which what matters is worth carrying.

The Pattern Beneath the Patterns

Now comes the uncomfortable part.

These seven patterns may look different:

1. Choosing familiarity.
2. Identifying with the past.
3. Trying to control everything.
4. Needing to be needed.
5. Repeating relationship dynamics.
6. Waiting for permission.
7. Chasing a perfect life.

But underneath them may be one common psychological movement:

You are trying to escape the responsibility of choosing.

Not because you are weak.

Because choosing is frightening.

• If you choose, you can be wrong.
• If you leave, you can regret it.
• If you speak, you can be rejected.
• If you begin, you can fail.
• If you change, people may not recognize you anymore.

So the mind develops clever alternatives.

It waits.

It analyzes.

It blames.

It overthinks.

It seeks certainty.

It asks everyone else what they would do.

And then it calls the resulting paralysis:

“I’m just being careful.”

Sometimes carefulness is wisdom.

Sometimes it is fear wearing a suit.

The difference is whether your caution is helping you move toward something meaningful—or protecting you from having to choose.

The Question Frankl Would Leave You With

There is a famous idea associated with Frankl’s work:

We often ask life what it means.

Frankl reverses the question.

Perhaps life is asking us.

Not:

“What can I get from life?”

But:

“What is life asking of me now?”

The Viktor Frankl Institute presents this responsibility-centered interpretation as central to his thought: life asks something of the individual, and the response is expressed through responsible action.

That changes everything.

1. Your difficult relationship becomes a question.
2. Your failure becomes a question.
3. Your loneliness becomes a question.
4. Your aging becomes a question.
5. Your unfinished dream becomes a question.
6. Your fear becomes a question.

Not necessarily:

“Why is this happening to me?”

But:

“Given that this is happening, who do I choose to become?”

That is a much harder question.

And perhaps a much more liberating one.

Try This Tonight

Take a blank piece of paper.

Write down three situations in your life that keep repeating.

Don’t explain them.

Just name them.

Then ask:

1. What keeps happening?

2. What do I usually do when it happens?

3. What emotion appears first?

4. What am I trying to avoid?

5. What am I trying to control?

6. What am I afraid would happen if I acted differently?

7. What response would be more aligned with the person I want to become?

Don’t rush the last question.

It may take longer than the others.

Because the first six are about understanding the pattern.

The seventh is about breaking it.

The Life You Don’t Notice You’re Building

There is something frightening about repetition.

A single decision can feel insignificant.

One missed opportunity.

One postponed dream.

One tolerated insult.

One unnecessary apology.

One year spent waiting.

None of them seems capable of determining a life.

But repetition compounds.

• A pattern repeated for ten years becomes a lifestyle.
• A lifestyle repeated for twenty years becomes an identity.
• An identity repeated long enough can feel indistinguishable from destiny.

That is why pattern recognition matters.

Not because every pattern is bad.

Some patterns are protecting you.

Some are teaching you.

Some are expressions of your values.

But others are simply old adaptations that survived long after the situation that created them disappeared.

And you may not notice the difference until something forces you to stop.

A divorce.

A diagnosis.

A layoff.

A death.

A birthday that suddenly feels significant.

A quiet Sunday morning when you realize:

“How did I get here?”

The terrifying part is that your life may not have changed overnight.

It may have been changing quietly for years.

Decision by decision.

Habit by habit.

Compromise by compromise.

Silence by silence.

But there is another side to this.

If a life can be shaped unconsciously through repeated patterns, then it can also be reshaped consciously through repeated choices.

You don’t have to understand your entire life today.

You only have to become capable of seeing the next pattern.

And then choosing your response to it.

That is where freedom becomes practical.

Not as the fantasy of controlling everything.

But as the ability 

• To stop confusing your circumstances with your identity.
• To stop confusing familiarity with meaning.
• To stop confusing fear with wisdom.
• To stop confusing waiting with preparation.
• To stop assuming that because something has always happened, it must continue happening.

Your past may explain you.

It does not have to command you.

And perhaps the moment you begin seeing your patterns clearly is the moment your life stops feeling like something that simply happens to you—

and starts becoming something you consciously answer.

The pattern is not the end of the story.

Recognizing it is the beginning.

Luna Rose

Death, be not proud

StockCake

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne

On Fate

StockCake

 This is the prayer Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoic school, once said,

“Lead me, Zeus, and you, Fate, wherever I am assigned to go. I will follow willingly. And if I refuse, I must follow nonetheless.

Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling.”

Early Stoics used the idea of a dog tied to a cart to illustrate how much power the invincible forces of the universe have over humans and what’s in our power in this interesting situation. 

Imagine Cleanthes’ dog for a second. 

When tied to a long enough leash, it’s free to explore along the road, even rest and pee a bit. It has freedom within specified limitations- though it can’t decide where or when the cart moves.

Say it wants to stop but the cart intends to keep moving- it’ll be dragged and possibly get hurt in the process. But if it chooses to continue just as the cart does, it’ll own the journey- constraint becomes freedom.

Your life moves the same way. 

You could be fired, betrayed, or lose someone you love, but you can’t reverse what has already happened. You can’t negotiate with aging, go back in time to change yesterday’s mistake, or wish death, illness, work and bad weather away. You’ll notice that the universe doesn’t consult any of us or consider that we haven’t had a break for the last one week. It just does as it pleases.

In those cases, you’re the dog and the cart is already moving.

You can slow down to cry, to grieve, to prevent bitter from turning sour, seek justice, leave and rebuild- but after some time we have to keep going with and from the world that now exists.

Your next steps will either require courage, restraint, patience, action, endurance or a difficult conversation with yourself to restrategize and start over. Not complain.

But that’s just the beginning.

Marcus Aurelius challenged himself to push the idea further. 

What would happen if you learned to regard the difficult and unwanted parts of life as necessary material to your particular existence- as something to learn from, work with to build your quirks, and create a beautiful life with?

Marcus Aurelius on Fate

“Love what happens to you and what is woven into your life. 

What could be more fitting for you than what belongs to the pattern of your own existence?”

Socratic questions for a better life:

1. If you think Marcus is asking too much of you and the situation you’re in, what point do think you can get to right now? Perhaps not complaining?

2. What would it mean to see an event as good and love it without pretending it’s good- this can be a failure, illness, betrayal or humiliation? What do you think it’s saving you from, helping you develop or giving you time to start building?

3. If it’s possible to make good of the situation fate brings to us, is saying something is ‘unfair’ describe reality or a fault in your judgement?

4. Where are you bargaining with reality, wishing it was different- yet there’s nothing you can do about it?

5. Suppose you could change the past, what would disappear with it? Consider new strengths, skills, relationships, opportunities, or discoveries you were forced into.

6. Should you accept a mediocre life and castrate your ambition just because fate is leading you? If not, how would you differentiate between accepting the facts you can’t change from simply being lazy and unbothered to do your best in the right strategy?

7. What possibilities are now open to you now that you’re no longer resisting the reality that has happened- now that this life can’t be exchanged for a different one?

in, The Stoic Manual

The Darkness

Valeriia Miller

You would never know it,

The constant pain I feel,

Because in the light of day

It almost isn’t real.

Sure, I’ll play, I’ll laugh,

I’ll sing some songs,

But that pain is always lurking

Because it’s been here all along.

And when the darkness comes

With its all-consuming power,

It slowly takes my soul

Hour by dreadful hour.

But they tell me that I’m strong enough.

They swear that it gets better.

They say, “If you can just hold out

and bear this stormy weather.”

They tell me, “You will be happy one day.

All you need do is fight.”

But what they seem to forget

Is after each day comes the night.

And so, I act along.

I play my part

While this crushing darkness

Slowly breaks my heart.

Dallas E. Krystof

On Pain

 

Alexander Krivitskiy

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.

     And he said:

     Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

     Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

     And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

     And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

     And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

     Much of your pain is self-chosen.

     It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

     Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

     For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

     And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Kahlil Gibran 

in,The Prophet