Sometimes we know what we want. Or at least, we think we do.
Perhaps we have wanted it for years. The bigger house, the successful career, the relationship, the family, the life that looks a certain way from the outside. When we have been moving towards something for long enough, it can seem rather strange to stop and ask ourselves where that desire came from in the first place.
Most of us absorb ideas about what a good life looks like without ever consciously deciding to do so. Our families have their hopes for us. Our friends make choices that influence what seems normal or desirable. We absorb ideas about success, security, happiness and what we ought to have achieved by a certain age. None of this is necessarily a bad thing. We are influenced by the people around us; that is part of being human.
And you may genuinely want the career, the house, the relationship or the lifestyle you have been working towards. The fact that other people value something does not make your desire for it any less real.
But sometimes, when we look a little more closely, we discover that something we have been chasing belongs, at least in part, to someone else.
That can be an uncomfortable thing to notice, particularly if we have spent years working towards something because it seemed like the natural next step. Perhaps we were good at it. Perhaps everyone around us thought it was what we should do. Perhaps it was simply what people like us did.
There may never have been a moment when we consciously decided, This is what I want.
We just kept going and sometimes, somewhere along the way, we stopped asking ourselves whether we actually wanted it.
There is a question that can work well for exploring this:
If nobody else knew what I chose, what would I choose?
It is an interesting question because it removes some of the audience.
Would you still want the career if nobody knew what you did for a living? Would the size of your house matter in quite the same way if nobody ever saw it? Would you make the same choices if you knew that nobody would be impressed, disappointed or surprised?
And what about the less obvious things? Would you still want to be the person who always holds everything together? Would you still feel that you ought to be further ahead by now? Would you still want the life you think you should be grateful for?
These questions aren't about deciding that other people's influence is bad. Nor are they an invitation to throw everything up in the air in search of some perfectly authentic version of yourself. Life is rather more complicated than that.
The point is simply to notice.
There is a difference between being influenced by the people and world around us, and being directed by them without realising it.
This matters too.
You might ask yourself these questions and discover that your answer doesn't change at all. You really do want the career. You really do want the house. You really do want the relationship. You really do want the life you have been building.
There is no prize for discovering that your wants were secretly someone else's.
Sometimes looking more closely simply gives us greater confidence that what we are pursuing really does belong to us. We don't necessarily end up wanting something completely different. We simply become clearer about why we are choosing what we choose.
And that's one of the benefits of knowing ourselves a little better.
There is another possibility, though. We may discover that we want something that doesn't fit neatly into the life we currently have.
Perhaps we want more freedom, but other people depend on us. Perhaps we want to leave something, but leaving would have consequences for people we love. Perhaps we want something that simply isn't possible right now.
That is different territory.
Knowing what you want does not necessarily mean you can have it. And knowing that something isn't possible does not necessarily make you stop wanting it.
Those questions belong elsewhere. For now, perhaps it is enough to become a little more curious about the things we call our wants.
Which ones still feel alive when we stop thinking about what other people might think? Which ones feel like choices rather than obligations? Which ones, when we are completely honest with ourselves, no longer seem to matter quite as much as they once did?
Sometimes becoming clearer about what we want doesn't make life more complicated. Sometimes it makes things lighter.
Because there is a difference between carrying a life because you think you should, and choosing a life because it is yours.
You might like to sit with the question:
If nobody else knew what I chose, what would I choose?
It may not give you an immediate answer, yet it might open doors of possibility.
