This one is fragmented because I just wanted to pour. I meant to write this last Christmas (hence the title). Then it felt better to “save for New Year” (is it New Year or New Years or New Year’s?) because the top of the year is when we all sit down and want. And then it was March. And now it is April. Barely.
I have a complicated and inhibiting relationship with wanting.
The alternate subtitle for this post was: Dear Diary, please tell God for me that this is what I want.
I’ve never really been one for wishlists.
I didn’t grow up in one of those houses where you wrote down what you wanted for Christmas and gave it to your parents to give Father Christmas. I asked for one thing once (a guitar), and I got it, but I never really outright asked for anything again. I don’t know why. I also don’t know when I stopped believing in Father Christmas or if I ever did.
A lot of my childhood was my mom telling me to tell her what I like, what I think, what I want.
***
Diaries are where we want, right? Where we just are. Uninhibited.
I stopped writing in a diary/journal when I was a teenager. People had read my innermost thoughts. That feels extremely icky. To have someone crawling around in my brain and heart nonconsensually. I shudder.
Some of my thoughts are simply Not Nice, and so I keep kept them to myself.
I was to pick journaling back up in my late teens and early twenties, but not to document my thoughts coherently or to write down my deepest desires. Just to get words on a page. I am still learning how to do the former.
When did I stop unapologetically desiring things?
Teenage Towani wanted things. She had a dream car, house, LIFE. She had a dream. Multiple.
Why does “desire” sound like a dirty word? I desire. I desire. I DESIRE.
Desire and Yearning and Lust and Insatiateness.
I want my job to be Fun.
I want to read more. Really read more.
I want reading to be my job. In a fun way. I kept saying this when I was in Zambia “as a joke”, but I sat with it and realized that’s what I really Want.
I Want to go back to school. I finally know what I want to do.
I Want chicken and chips.
I Want a courtyard.
I Want this book. Among others.
I Want to Grow.
I Want to let myself dream.
I Want my wishes to come true.
Being a person who just want-want-wants has such negative connotations. I love that word. Why am I so obsessed with the connotations of things?
i think that’s one of my limiting beliefs.
Here’s another.
I’m still learning about God, by the way.
***
I was born and raised Catholic. I say that sentence with the practiced consistency of a sprinkler.
That means I am a brand of Christian.
And accordingly, I shall not want1. Right?
Do not worry about tomorrow because it has enough worries of its own2, right? Be grateful and all that.
In pop culture terms: The story of the miser3. King Midas4. The Pussycat Dolls5.
So, if I want so much…I must be doing Christianity wrong. Humanity wrong.
Because greed is birthed from wanting. And greed is what we’re so warned against.
So…wanting = bad?
The more nuanced approach is probably assessing the Why behind the Want, but I literally just learned that. Between December and now.
Is that the proper way to Want?
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Psalm 23:1 (KJV)
The essential premise of Matthew 6:26-34. This is about verse 34.
Aesop’s fable about the miser that buried gold in his yard and dug it up occasionally just to look at it. He got robbed, and he’d never even touched the gold himself.
Wanted so much that he asked the gods for the power to turn everything gold. He turned his daughter gold. Then he cried and wanted even more to get rid of the curse.
“ Be careful what you wish for ‘cause you just might get it,” they sing menacingly on their 2008 smash hit, ‘When I Grow Up’.