The Be-All, End-All: It’s Not All That
Why we believe what we can’t have will fix us
From Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, the world is full of people who seem to have everything, yet desire “just one more” thing. You know, the one thing that will end all the desire forever and make us into good, happy and content people? For Macbeth, it was becoming king. For Gatsby, it was winning Daisy, the love of his life. The problem, however, is that it’s usually an unattainable goal. Macbeth has to kill King Duncan to become king, his “be-all, end-all” scenario. And Daisy? She’s married and has no intention of leaving her husband for new money, especially not for something as frivolous as love.
But let’s face it, they’re not the only ones with this problem. In most Western cultures, we’re taught to always strive for more. It doesn’t matter what that more is, so long as you’re always struggling for that one evasive thing. It can be something big, like true love or your dream college or that job that will complete you. Or it could be something relatively small, but that seems big to you, such as that too-expensive pair of boots or a better living situation.
No matter what, we’re taught to not be content to simply live as you are, with what you have. What are you, a quitter? Come on, think big! Reach for the stars! Go for the gold! What you have now is okay, I guess, but…think of the possibilities!
The downside to this not that we are reaching for the unattainable, but rather that it feeds our false beliefs that something is better when it’s hard to get. When we’re kids, we want that one cool toy that everyone’s getting…until we get it. Then, it’s just as quickly forgotten. Remember the Cabbage Patch Doll craze of the ’80s? How long did any of those things get played with? Probably about as long as it took to get it out of the box.
And crushes! I think I spent most of my teen years going from random crush to random crush, preferably on someone who didn’t know me. And if they did seem interested in me, that pretty much killed it for me.
Groucho Marx once said, “I refuse to belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member.” In short, do we always want something “better” simply because it’s so hard to get that it must be great? Psychologically speaking, we do seem to respond more positively to things that are harder to attain. But is this leading us to build false assumptions around a person or a thing that we desire? Resoundingly, yes! We believe that the grass is greener elsewhere, and therefore, we really, really want to go to THERE.
So, what’s the answer? Do we stop reaching for those stars? No, not necessarily. Just understand the danger in putting too much value on a thing (or a person!) you may not even truly understand. Temper your cravings with the logic that sometimes, we can’t always get what we want. But like the song says, if you try, you can get what you need. Understand the difference.
