Bonnie Bing: When making a decision ask yourself “Do you want to want to?”

Listening to a little boy in the grocery store with his mom I almost laughed out loud when he continually told his mother what he wanted. He was probably about 5 years old and he was intent on getting out of the soup section and going to where a few toys and books were on shelves at his eye level.

He wanted to see if they had any trucks. He wanted cereal that was brown and tasted like chocolate, he wanted mac and cheese and a variety of juice boxes. And he wanted a truck.

His very patient mom agreed to some of it, but there was not going to be any chocolate tasting cereal in the basket. That didn’t set well with junior. “You keep saying you want, you want, you want. Remember you don’t get everything you desire,” she said.

He puffed out his chest and said “I don’t even know what that word means.”

“What word?” his mom asked.

“Desire!” he said in his outdoor voice.

Using her indoor voice and leaning over to look him in the eye she said, “It means want. You don’t always get what you want.”

Desire is tricky isn’t it? Some desires are fleeting or easily satisfied, a twist yogurt cone from Braum’s for example. Desired. Drive through window. Done.

But other desires, such as a new car, a new house, or say, a villa in Tuscany are much harder to come by.

But it’s not all material things. I have a tremendous desire for our young family members to live happily with good health and in a peaceful world long after I’m gone.

The Greek word for desire is “thymos.” Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist and professor at Stanford says “It’s the desire for a desire.” He says that the deepest form of desire is to have another person desire you and it’s not a desire for something material.

When I read that I thought of one of my dad’s sayings. When I had a decision to make and wanted his input, which was often, he would usually ask, “Do you want to want to?”

The first time he said that it didn’t make much sense, but as I got older I began to understand.

In a situation where you know you have the desire to do something but the consequences are life changing, it’s a good thing to ask yourself. It will test the level of your desire.

Sometimes it’s just a big fat fight between desire and fear. For example a person desires to explore the possibility of a new career but the security of their present job weighs heavily on the side of staying put. Sometimes fear will win out. Most of us can look back and see times when fear won and the consequences, good or bad, that it brought.

Measuring desire for exploration against desire for security gives you the answer.

After my friend looked around for a new job, but not very aggressively, she said, “I just thought because I’d been there so long I should look, but I didn’t really want a new job. I didn’t even want to want one.” Perfect example.

Next time you say the word “want” or “desire” reflect on the many things we’ve heard for many years about desires. And let’s not forget an old favorite: “Be careful what you wish for.”