You don't always get what your heart desires

I sometimes wonder why our hearts desire what it cannot get. I mean life would be much simpler if it doesn't desire for things. Do those things predetermine our happiness? Would we be lacking in any way for not having or getting this and that? If I can't afford that house on top of the hill, or that designer handbag, would my degree of happiness be any lesser? And greater for possessing them?

How sad life would be then because we don't always get what our hearts desire.

What about, I might ask, would those that you see living on the streets feel about their own desires? How helpless and insignificant their existence seem to be; hey, I almost heard them screaming back, "I didn't asked to be born helpless.' "I didn't choose who I am. Who I have become.'

That had made me looked at myself. At my own circumstances in life. Shouldn't I feel grateful with all the things that I already have? It doesn't matter how little, or how basic your life is, in looking at others who are worst off, what little you have makes you feel like a king. Or, a truly fortunate human being.

Yet, these are physical, material things. Things we could realistically can do without.

What irks me about having desires, the thing that truly annoys me, are those desires that come in their abstraction. Peace. Happiness. Love.

I could do the same as I did with the house on top of the hill or that designer handbag. I could look around me and find the most restless, sad and angry people around me and say, I am not that restless, I am not that sad and I am not an angry person. So therefore I should be a fortunate human being.

Hmmm....

That's not a good comparison, is it? lol

No, it is not. It should not be made as a comparison even.

Most of the times, one cannot brush off the desire for peace as one does for material things. It just doesn't work that way. With the heart I meant. Peace is an abstraction. For most, it is still undefined. Vague. Likewise, happiness and love are ambiguous concepts that wouldn't allow you to define what it is. If I said my heart desires happiness what then should I do, seek it? Where? How do I recognize it? It doesn't get sold in an upmarket for the rich, nor peddle on the streets so that the common men could purchase it.


The heart wouldn't stop desiring though. Even if it doesn't know what happiness is. Or what love truly is. It could wait. It could still hope.

Because that is what it means to live. To be alive. For as long as one has the desires, it validates an existence.

Therefore, even if you don't always get what your heart desires, don't despair. Be grateful and thankful that you are not the one living on the streets.