Childhood dreams … a china doll with real, black hair, a piano, a horse … desires unfulfilled … replaced by a rag doll that ended up in the lake and a harmonium I hated. Making myself indispensable at a local stable, I gained free riding time, though I never owned a horse, which made it difficult to enter the horse world.
Children’s desires are powerful motivators, though often frustrated, and sometimes for good reasons diverted towards other means of achieving the underlying need. We can’t remain in the toddler stage, and yet … something will be lost in the process.
Psychology has clever distinctions between wants and needs, which goes something like this:
Q … if you had that piano, what would it do for you?
A … I could play all the music in my head
Q … what would that do for you?
A … it would give me pleasure?
Q … what would pleasure do for you?
A … fuck off …
Sorry, my personal immature sentiment. This kind of re-framing sets out to prove that a WANT serves a deeper NEED that can be fulfilled through other means. Of course it can, and if one road is blocked the diversion and roundabouts may serve a genuine need we can’t even fathom.
Still, there is nothing more powerful than a strong desire, an object in life. It makes life worth living. An ideal is a means … thank heavens ideals change …
I always wanted to live in a house of my own design. I even saw it in a dream, made of wood and glass, in a sheltered place overlooking the ocean – a metaphor.
Designing one’s own house (or identity) often looks more like this process … a means spiced with surreal aspects of life, a tragic comedy maybe, yet also a journey where one meets friends and fun. I used this image before to illustrate a point.
I hope you bear with my quirky posts.
BTW, the wonderful Cartoon de Salvo theatre band (above) is worth looking out for.
Course of Mirrors 
I can really emphasise with this, Ashen.
LikeLike
It’s a good a idea to assess the motivations that come from childhood. When I was five, my best friend was dying from a brain tumor but I wasn’t aware of it — I was five. I didn’t even know he was blind near the end, when we would watch TV and he insisted I describe what was happening on the tube. I described the action in an amusing way, to make him laugh.
After college, I had a hard time finding a job but I finally got one at a firm that supplied TV listings to newspapers. I’ve been there since. It wasn’t until my 25th anniversary that I made the connection. The motivations of childhood are powerful though not always obvious.
LikeLike
Thanks, Kate, I’m glad the post echoes.
LikeLike
JF, yes, early motivators are powerful. And you developed a skill. And when you became aware of the link, another desire was freed. Like writing Brickweavers, a story from the deep, like … your Thujwani, who long ago discovered the secrets of brickweaving: the laying of bricks in special patterns that manipulate the forces of magnetism and gravity, and who have used this knowledge to gouge a world of comfort out of the desert, and to enslave others.
Thinking about it, it brings Wall Street to mind.
LikeLike
Thanks ffor sharing
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re welcome, Debra ☼
LikeLike