Quote:
Originally Posted by SimplyGold  Rather than rehash what others have said so better:
If nobody truly wants anything, then we wouldn't have much innovation, would we? How many breakthroughs happened by people who were content with their lives? |
Hi SimplyGold!
I so agree. Also to remember is how linguistics affect us. Somewhere along the lines, I think after the Great Depression, but certainly at other times, children have been admonished not to "want" so much (Parents who actually grew up though the Depression and had their kids in the 50's might well look at a kid who wants one more toy shown on the ads during Leave it to Beaver, and say hey you don't need so much stuff...we have food to eat! Our culture went from so very poor in the 30's to so much better off in the 50's it was truly culture shock for many). Anyway, I digress....
I fully agree, Sadhana, that we can use the word "want" in many different ways...we may be reflecting greed or selfishness or careless materialism, or it may be something giving, creative, spiritual, responsible, and so on.
Songwriter and I had a very interesting exchange about this word in Spanish. "Quiero" in Spanish is the word for want, and also the word for love and cherish. So if you love somebody you might say "Yo quiero..." after 50 years of marriage just to express how much this person means to you. This came up during a different discussion on this board having to do with "negative attraction" if you concentrate on what you don't want rather than how you do want things to be. In Spanish,"quiero" does not imply that you don't have something, so Songwriter aptly decided that it worked for him to use "quiero" and once he explained the linguistics, I couldn't agree more!
Another very interesting discussion, I believe on the thread dealing with specific vs general intentions...settled into the idea that different people do best with different things to prepare their mindset for good intention work. That's so true and seems to relate to this as well. For some, if "want" is not a good word, I think it very important, not trivial at all to choose another word. It's what is really going on underneath and between the words that matters much, yes?
All best,