What Do I Really Want?

What do I really want?

Money

Success

Status

Love

Position

....

Who doesn't want these?

And yet,

"Is what I want actually mine?"

For a long time, I wanted to weigh 48 kilograms.

The number 48, from I don't know where —

that number of unknown origin (the origin was in fact perfectly clear: it came from outside) lodged itself in me

and steered everything I did, thought, timed, and spent energy on.

To become 48 kilograms I controlled what I ate.

To become 48 kilograms I searched for diets.

To become 48 kilograms I bought every product that looked like it might get me there.

To become 48 kilograms I spent my hours — the ones that pile up and get called my life.

Back then it seemed I was unhappy because I hadn't reached the number, and that reaching it would surely make me happy.

Then one day it struck me:

I wanted something this badly,

and I had no idea where the wanting had started.

Was it really mine?

Or had I taken what society taught me to want, and believed it was my own desire?

The world was always feeding me inputs. As numbers, as university labels, as job titles, as relationship status.

By this age you need this,

then run for that,

and once that mission is complete, sprint toward the next assignment.

And it isn't only inputs. There are pacemakers all around — crowds running to output exactly what they were fed.

But did all of those choices come from what I actually wanted?

Am I spending my actions, thoughts, hours, attention, intention, energy where I truly want them?

How do I tell an input from my outside environment apart from the real voice inside?

External wanting and inner truth — the fine difference in grain

The job I want to have,

the way I want to look,

the house and the city I want to live in,

even the shape of relationship I want —

any of it might not be mine.

From the moment we're born we watch and hear — mentally, sensorially, energetically, across every area of life — this is what gets loved, this is what life is,

and then we try to output our own lives from that data.

What success is,

what a worthwhile life looks like —

on top of a diagram that has already been drawn,

we live with "my desire" quietly disguised.

Before we ever consider what we truly want, what life we truly want, we set a desire that fits the given conditions.

Does my wanting come from lack, or is it an expression of being?

Wanting has two roots.

One comes from lack. The other is being expressing itself.

Wanting that comes from lack exists because I feel a hole in me,

and it wants to fill the hole.

"I'm not enough, so I have to have that."

"Once I have this, once I get there, then I can finally be happy."

This kind of wanting always frames me as insufficient, as something to be topped up. Not enough.

Someone who has lived without financial security, for instance,

chases money and makes career achievement the target in order to fill that lack.

(This isn't to say chasing financial security is wrong. It's that pursuing something from a root of lack tends to lead your experience into a state and a reality where you feel the lack more: the law of assumption.)

Wanting as an expression of being, on the other hand, is not there to satisfy me.

It's a flow of energy that comes out of me naturally.

It comes from intuition: "Doing this makes me feel like myself. Alive."

"This is the road I'm meant to walk."

Wanting as expression is not hunted and not hurried. It is a life that knows it is here, where it should be, doing what it should be doing.

This kind of wanting isn't filling a hole.

It's an output that shows itself from the inside out, naturally, like energy overflowing.

So how do you actually tell them apart?

Wanting is loud.

It shouts right into your ear. I need that, I have to have this, I have to become that!

And the tension, anxiety, waiting and restlessness come in at the same volume.

The pull, in contrast, arrives quietly, almost imperceptibly.

It leads you gently.

It's simply a flow that comes out of you on its own.

Where you want to go,

what you want to make,

who you want to spend your hours with —

whether it's a sensation that makes you more alive, the body knows first.

It isn't running toward a goal.

It's moving in the direction you are honestly drawn to.

Not doing work because you feel you're forced to,

but going where you genuinely enjoy, where you can pour your energy.

The way a river following its current ends up at the sea —

not searching everywhere for the thing you want (or believe you want), but being carried toward it.

Questions for finding the life you want

As we live we learn all kinds of social norms.

We receive a constant message: live like this, become this and you'll be happy —

and we've been thinking and acting under that pull.

So for someone who has had to choose endlessly between the success defined outside and the real self calling from within,

what can be done, starting now, to know what is actually wanted?

This journey moves inward rather than outward.

Ask yourself these.

"Did this thing I want right now really start in my own heart?"

"If I didn't want it, would I become a lesser person?"

"When I do this, do I feel more alive?"

"Has this pull been calling me all along?"

"Does this wanting expand me, or shrink me?"

These questions don't hand over a clear answer.

They bring you closer to yourself.

And inside that closeness, you eventually find a direction you know without being told,

and your own life becomes the answer to "what do I really want?"

Wanting is a passage for finding yourself

Finally — you don't have to suppress or deny your wanting.

The deeper you look into it,

the more you can hear the real voice of you hidden inside it.

I wanted to be 48 kilograms

because I thought I had to have the ideal beauty to be chosen.

Chosen by what? Chosen by men.

Why did I think I had to be chosen by a man?

Because I had to meet a good one and be loved.

Because being loved and having a stable relationship is what a happy life is.

To a person carrying that belief system, there are many questions worth asking.

(If my example doesn't land for you, substitute your own — real estate, stocks, power, status — along with the belief system underneath it.)

Where did the idea (the concept, the perception) that "48 kilograms is ideal beauty" come from? Is it true?

Where did "you have to have ideal beauty to be chosen," "you have to have ideal beauty to be loved" come from? Is it true?

Where did "be chosen by a man," "I must be chosen," "I am an object that has to be chosen" come from? Is it true?

Where did "you must meet a good man," "a woman's life depends on who she meets," "a happy life is meeting a good man and having a stable relationship" come from? Is it true?

Where did "I must be loved," "love is only given when I meet certain conditions," "I am an object that has to receive love," "love is something given conditionally from outside" come from? Is it true?

And so on. Between concept and concept, between one common assumption and the next, there are countless joints and gaps.

What finds them, and takes down the beliefs handed to you from outside with no floor under them, is a person's own thinking and questioning — their consciousness and perception.

And on that road of thinking and questioning, we gradually

arrive at the things we actually want.

That isn't a result you achieve. It's the process of coming to know yourself better.

The truth is that my root desire had nothing to do with what the scale said.

It was to be loved unconditionally, not on condition —

and that love isn't something to be taken from outside. It's the unconditional acceptance and love I can give myself first.

And when, at a deeper layer, you come to know that you are love,

life turns from "me wanting to have something"

into "what do I want to express," "what do I want to live out."

And on that journey of self-awareness — looking under the wanting to see what's there —

when you listen inward and follow the current of a nature that wants to exist more deeply,

you may finally flow, together with the life you truly want, all the way to the sea.