No Two People Desire the Same Thing
Most desires are intangible and abundant.
Apart from greedy, intentionally cruel, terrible people, nobody wants war. History shows how time and again, despite some technological advancements, war only gets us dead people on both sides.
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. On this day, we honor those who gave their lives so that our democracy and its principles could remain. Whether the war they fought was just or unjust, today we honor fallen soldiers and their ultimate sacrifice. Lives lost in combat matter, and that’s why today has been made: to commemorate those lost in war.
Why do we go to war? Sometimes it’s about forcing one ideology over another. Other times, someone has a resource someone else wants. Still other times, we go to war because we refuse to roll over and let a despot or megalomaniac destroy our liberties and freedoms.
War is sometimes about tangible things, like land and natural resources. Other times, it’s about tenets, beliefs, and values. Yet, when all is said and done, no two people desire the same thing, tangible or intangible.
The line between individuality and collective consciousness has become increasingly blurred. What’s more, false notions of selfishness drive people to lose themselves and lessen their ability to make conscious choices and decisions for themselves. The only way to reclaim that is by working to be more consciously aware. Then you can see that most of what you desire is intangible and abundant.
The (em)power of active conscious awareness
The subconscious mind is like a sponge. It absorbs anything it comes into contact with. Like a sponge, if you allow it to go unchecked for too long, it gets nasty and overloaded.
Unchecked, the subconscious mind forms and holds onto beliefs, values, and habits virtually forever. That’s why things your parents tell you are true in your childhood remain true in the back of your mind and come out of nowhere to derail you today. For example, if your parents instilled in you notions that money is impossible to come by unless you do horrific things, and/or love is conditional, you probably struggle with money and relationships.
Yes, there are exceptions to the above. But more than that, you can choose to wring out the sponge of your subconscious mind. How? By active conscious awareness. That’s where mindfulness comes in.
Mindfulness is current awareness of your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self. You can get that by asking questions that can only be genuinely answered right here and now. These questions include:
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What are my intentions?
- Is my approach positive or negative?
- What am I doing?
- Why am I doing (or not doing) this?
All the above can only be answered in the present moment. Those answers make you actively consciously aware. From that, you can make choices and decisions to work on getting what you desire.
While everyone wants and needs tangible things in life, what we all most desire are the intangibles. And these aren’t lacking, scarce, or insufficient in any way, shape, or form.
No two people desire the same thing
When it comes to tangible things, there can be limitations. When someone produces only 100 copies of a car, watch, or whatever, only 100 people can get it. In this way, two people can, will, and do desire the same tangible thing.
We all have our likes and dislikes. Preferences. Some people only use certain brands and specific products. And yes, sometimes, production genuinely runs low or slow, and we can’t get them.
However, the things that most people desire are intangible. Like kindness, compassion, empathy, love, caring, consideration, and feeling like we matter. Emotions, feelings, thoughts, and intentions to and from one another.
These are in abundance. They are infinite and never run out. The shape they take differs from person to person. Like love languages, needing touch versus alone time, how we feel, and all the other indescribable immaterial bits of life vary broadly. Yet they’re amazingly abundant.
Even a narcissistic, self-serving, cruel asshole desires intangibles. They just see naught but lack, scarcity, and insufficiency in everything tangible and intangible. Unfortunately, many people get so caught up in the artifices of lack, scarcity, and insufficiency in the material world that they apply it to the immaterial.
Yet even in the material world, abundance is the truth.
Resources – material and immaterial – are everywhere
Most people have heard the saying, “When one door closes, another opens.” No matter who said this (it’s often attributed to Alexander Graham Bell or Helen Keller), it’s true.
When something tangible becomes scarce, we always manage to find an alternative to it. Something new is discovered or created to replace whatever that tangible thing is.
Technology has evolved so swiftly in the past century that many people are feeling utterly left behind. Then, those feelings get weaponized by the greedy and unscrupulous and used to drive false narratives. One group blames another for insufficiency, resources, or whatnot, and lo and behold, we find ourselves fighting another pointless war.
Except for the aforementioned limited-edition run of a tangible thing, lack, scarcity, and insufficiency are bullshit. That’s because even when a given tangible runs out, a replacement can and will be found or made. We human beings are especially clever like that.
But when all is said and done, no two people desire the same thing. Similar, maybe, but not the same. And most of what we desire is intangible. And the intangible and immaterial are abundant beyond comprehension.
You have more power than you are often led to believe. When you take even a minute or two to pause, breathe, and examine your current mindset/headspace/psyche self, you gain active conscious awareness. That puts you in greater control of your life experience. Then that turns you into a beacon of light and hope, which can expand to those around you. In that way, you and I can help shift the collective’s fear-based mindset toward a more reason-based one.
Because we desire different, mostly intangible things, they’re in abundance beyond our wildest imaginations. Mindfulness practices help us see this more clearly and make better choices and decisions to gain them.
Recognizing that no two people desire the same thing isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that the intangibles you desire most – and that what you most desire is intangible – you can more clearly see how abundant they really are. Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, and that what you desire differs from anyone else (and takes nothing from others), you can use mindfulness to make choices and decisions to help yourself and do greater good for others.
This empowers you. When you’re empowered, that can, in turn, empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in ways that open you to more potential, possibility, and the like. From there, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you in the here and now.
The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them, too. That is an amazing conduit to help reason overcome fear in the collective consciousness.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the six-hundred-forty-first (641) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
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