When Will the Wanting End So You Can Embrace Living?

I have always wanted a lot of things and I still do want so many things—-some are necessary and many fall within the unnecessary box.

I wanted to finish College and I got that done. Then I wanted a degree and I went ahead for that too. After the degree, I wanted a master’s degree, which I got done. Then I wanted a 2nd master’s degree which I obtained too–and now I am thinking about a P.hd, and it is highly likely I will go chasing that too.

Besides the above, I wanted a job which I got, and then I wanted to be working for myself by a certain age, which I went after it and got it achieved. I wanted a car; I have bought several—one after another as they keep messing up. I wanted to travel a lot which I have done and continue to do…

For the many years of my life, I’ve been “WANTING” things and the moment I get these things, they become unimportant to me—the next want sets in and I go chasing that.

This is not an isolated lifestyle or a definition of my existence alone—it is how millions of people, both old and young are living their lives. Many more will join and many will die wanting, without ever living.

I remember reading Timothy Ferriss’ New York Times Bestseller-The 4 Hour Work Week (Escape the 9-5 Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich), in which he highlighted the fact that many people will never live, yet they will die.

Ferriss had brilliant advice, which is, even if you want to work like a donkey so you can keep chasing wants, that is somehow fine. But instead of waiting to be 70 years to retire (when you cannot really do much), you must take mini-retirements throughout your life—instead of “hoarding the recovery and enjoyment for the fool’s gold of retirement”. He was right when he said life is most enjoyable when you are effective, not when you are 60 with eye problems. That will never amount to living but struggling to live…

The most important question is, when do we stop the “wanting” in order to live and enjoy life for what it is—and celebrate the many wants we had which are no more, because they’ve been accomplished?

I surely do not want to live the rest of my life wanting, without ever giving myself the opportunity to LIVE but breaking away from the magic circle of want demands a total change in mindset. And I’ve realized that to do this, I must start by placing less value on my wants, more value on my life and a higher value on those things that have been achieved.

At College, I spent 3 years studying Economics and what I took out of it all which is relevant to this today is; man has an insatiable demand for more and more goods and services. We are inherently greedy and what most of us do not know is; we are robbing our own selves from living, with this irrepressible hunger for more and more…

A friend of mine broke away easily from the desire of unending wants which robs us of our own existence by becoming a minimalist, something I have become too.

Since then, I have seen him living his life to the highest, and I sometimes envy him (not that he has a lot) but because he has been able to break away from this pathetic lifestyle most of us will die chained to. For people like him, he has no wants, he only has a life to live and what matters to him is good health—the rest, he cares less.

We have just this life and yet we continue to place so many things ahead of living it. I’ve taken upon myself to end the wanting so I can begin living—so I can enjoy my existence.

I hope you also get to ask yourself this;  When Will the Wanting End So You Can Embrace Living?