50/50 Fall 2008, Exercise #6: “We never ask for the things we need the most…”

Five False Starts

“We never ask for the things we need the most.” I don’t know if I agree with that statement, so what am I going to do with it? If we’re in touch with who we are, we do ask for the things we need the most. But I guess a lot of people go through life without asking. Who is this “we”?

“We never ask for the things we need the most,” she said to me.

“What do you mean by that?” I said.

“I mean, we say we want independence, but what we want is financial security. We say we want justice, but we’d rather have revenge.”

We never ask for the things we need the most. No, strike that. We ask for the things we need, but we don’t actually want them. We ask for Truth, but Truth isn’t what we want. We want a good story. We want a great story. We want a story of wonder and magic and nobility and heroism, but Truth doesn’t tell that kind of story. Truth tells stories about suffering and survival and the slow passage of time….

We never ask for the things we need the most. And most of us make do, we find our way, we get by with what comes our way from the goodness or grace or benevolence or lucky indifference of the universe. But once in a while, one of us gets lost, one of us becomes isolated, or perhaps I should say, one of us becomes more isolated even than all the rest. He finds himself in a place where no one can reach him, and he does something terrible, something desperate, and puts himself in a position where no one can give him anything at all.

“We never ask for the things we need the most.” I don’t know what that means. I’ve tried imagining those words in the voice of a frustrated seeker, an unsatisfied lover, an angry materialist, or the witness to a suicide, but I don’t like where any of these stories lead.

What else to say?

We never ask for the things we need the most, because as long as we don’t ask, then we can blame the other person for not giving those things to us, and so our unhappiness is someone else’s fault. As soon as we ask, we accept responsibility for the consequences of having expressed our desires.

Is that true? Does it matter?

To ask for what we need the most is to accept responsibility for our own destinies.

© 2008 Edward F. Gumnick