GETTING WHAT YOU REALLY WANT

by Bill Cottringer

     I sense a need to proceed very cautiously with these words. They represent a mother of an idea that is either the most simply profound idea I have ever understood, or just plain common sense that I should have known a very long time ago. The idea is one of enormous consequences and much like the Energizer Bunny that keeps on going and going and going.

     Several years ago I wrote a book with the understood-in-my-head version of this idea—You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too. The story was a metaphor for the basic life conflict portrayed by two clever Siamese cats, named Khaos and Kunfuzion and two wise little mice named Simplicity and Klarity.  The conflict was how to create chaos and restore order to reach a creative compromise in closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be, for a maximum happy ending. I think I am now just understanding the meaning of this giant metaphor in my heart and soul, where it really counts and can do the most good.

     As I writer, I somehow access important ideas floating around out there in the cosmos and then bring them back to the real world to live and understand well enough to write about them with clarity for others to know. This is an awesome responsibility that I don’t think I asked for, at least consciously. You see, the trouble is, the bigger the idea, the more the consequences and levels of meaning that keep unfolding; and of course the harder it is to wrap you arms around it for complete understanding and benefit.

     The renegade, rogue psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, who wrote the classic book, The Myth of Mental Illness, gave me one of these Energizer Bunny ideas that keeps unfolding more and more meaning in my own life. The idea is that we are posed to make a major positive transformation in our lives, when we finally notice what we have been failing to notice all along.

     What I have failed to notice all along, and I suspect this is a very common failure, is that I may think I know what I think I want, but be totally unaware of what I really want. My Energizer Bunny idea is that we all really want to have our cake and eat it too and we can never be fully satisfied until we learn how to be successful in cracking that seemingly impossible paradox.

    Let’s explore how this one very fundamental drive produces all the potential for positive success, and all the good feelings associated with that achievement, as well as negative failure, and all the negative emotions associated with that outcome. Our country’s government is founded on a system designed to give us our cake and eat it too, to grant us all the two most precious rewards (which often appear to be working in opposition to each other), stewarded by the Republicans and Democrats—freedom and equality. All work is a an opportunity to have our cake and eat it too—to give and get, giving our talents, time and efforts and getting a sense of meaning and satisfaction from what we are doing, and also to belong as a team and contribute as an individual.

     Moreover, relationships are an opportunity to have our cake and eat it too—to retain our sense of individual self, uniqueness and freedom and also to gain a sense of belonging, joining and getting something more as a couple. Even God speaks in two voices for us to be able to have our cake and eat it too—loud shouts of unconditional love and complete acceptance for who we are now, and gentle whispers to remember to keep learning, growing and improving to be the best we can be. Even sleep offers us a way to have our cake and eat it too—with both right and left brain hemispheres working by dreaming and imagining without boundaries or rationality, and making practical, rational sense and utility of these dreams. And we have religious writers and speakers to give us the security of certainty, and their counterpart—the spiritualists—who give us the courage to pursue the wisdom of insecurity at the edge of conventional reality. I assume you are beginning to get the idea as the beef radio commercial guy with the deep voice tells us.  

     Perhaps, our whole lives are mostly about figuring out how to have our cake and eat it too—getting all our mind’s secular wants (“little cheese” for the ego—job success, material wealth, selfish physical and emotional pleasure, knowledge, excitement, etc.) and also meeting our deeper spiritual needs (“big cheese” for the soul—love, compassion, creativity, wisdom, peace and self-less service).

     It seems to me that relationships offer the biggest challenge to figuring out how to have you cake and eat it too, because that is what we really want from another person in a relationship. We really want both the security of secular compatibilities such as taking in and getting physical, emotional, social, intellectual and vocational appeal, as well as letting go, trusting and giving into our dreams of the surprise of powerful passion, unconditional love, unbridled creativity, deep understanding and support of self-less service to our brothers and sisters.  In essence, we want what we know and don’t know, have and don’t have.

    This article wouldn’t be complete without the attempt to offer a practical prescription for having your cake and eating it too. Here’s all I know at this point in my own journey, for your consideration.

1. You can wait patiently for this most valuable gift to be dropped on your doorstep, or…
   
2. You can take a giant leap of faith when love is standing there right before you, and give up all you expectations and preferences as to how you are to proceed in eating you cake and still have it afterwards. In other words, just do it.