Chapter 11: I Want

A child in a shopping mall stands in front of a row of toys and won’t move. The grown-up pulls him; he won’t move. The grown-up says there’s one almost the same at home; he won’t listen. He points at that one, his face red with effort: I want it! I want this one!

The grown-up most likely buys it. The child hugs it all the way home, won’t let go, plays with it for two days, puts it in a cupboard, and never takes it out again.

“I want”: people say it all their lives; only what they say it about changes. As children they want toys, sweets, to be picked up. Grown, they want a good job, someone to love them, a flat, to be thought well of, children who do well, good health, a settled life. They may not say it aloud, but inside they are always wanting.

Wanting is not a bad thing. Hungry, you want to eat; cold, you want clothes; lonely, you want company; these wants are what being alive looks like. It is a person who wants nothing at all that would really be worrying.

But sometimes something else is hidden in this sentence too.

Someone has his eye on a coat in a shop window, not cheap. He thinks about it for days, glancing at it whenever he passes. At last he buys it, and the first day he wears it he walks with a spring in his step. A month later it hangs in the wardrobe, squeezed in with the other clothes, and he hardly thinks of it. He is looking at another one.

Someone waits years for a promotion. At last it comes, and he is happy for a week. Then he finds the new position has more pressure, there are higher positions above, and beside him are people promoted faster. That “at last” soon stops being at last.

Someone pursues another person for a long time. He wins her, they are together, and at first he feels he has everything. Two years on, looking at the person lying beside him, a very small thought sometimes comes up: is this it?

Someone wanted a child for many years, hoped and prayed many times. At last the child came, and the moment he held it in his arms he felt his whole life had been worth it. Later the child grew up, disobeyed, answered back, had ideas of his own, came home once a year. He sits in an empty house, and a place in his heart is empty again.

And there is a kind of wanting that never got what it wanted. A thing wanted all one’s life—a person, a chance, a place—and still not had in old age. Speaking of it, the eyes dim for a moment.

And a kind that got it and lost it again. Money saved with great effort, spent in one illness; a family built with great effort, broken up; a body built up with great effort, collapsed all at once.

In these shapes there is often an assumption: when I get it, I will be whole.

As if there were a gap in the heart exactly the shape of that thing: that coat, that position, that person, that child. Only get it, fit it in, and the gap is filled, the person is full, and can stop.

But the gap is never filled. What isn’t got stays missing; what is got, after a while, the gap is there again, a different shape, waiting for the next thing. As if the gap were not the shape of any thing, but a hole in a person that has always been there.

This is what the Buddhists call the suffering of not getting what one seeks.

There are three kinds. One is seeking and not getting: wanted all one’s life, still not had in old age. One is getting and then losing: what was had with such effort, gone. And one, the deepest and least often seen clearly: getting, and still feeling something missing.

The first two people can put into words, and they know where the suffering lies. The third they often can’t put into words; they just feel empty from time to time, feel “is this it?”, feel they have everything they wanted and are still not satisfied.

The third kind gives the game away: what is missing was never in that thing.

If what is missing were in the thing, then when the thing arrived, the lack would be gone. But the thing arrives, and the lack is still there. Then where does this lack come from?

From that assumption: I am not whole now, and will be whole only when I get it. While this assumption hangs there, whatever is got, however much, it is still “not whole now”; wholeness is forever at the next thing, forever up ahead.

But being in this place was never lacking.

The day without that coat was a full day: passing the window, a glance, a little itch inside, walking on. The day it was got was a full day too: putting it on, walking with a spring in one’s step. The days it hung forgotten in the wardrobe were all fully lived too. Days can lack—money, a person, security—and these lacks are real; filled, the days will be better; but being does not lack. Filled, being is not a bit more; unfilled, being is not a bit less.

The one who feels “is this it?” is lying beside someone right now, listening to that person’s breathing, a little light outside the window. What does this moment lack? What it lacks is only a thought, “there ought to be more”; this moment itself is fully being.

“I will be whole only when I get it” is, when you come down to it, another picking: what a person owns is the me after getting, the one in that coat, in that position, with that person beside him. This empty-handed one now is treated as the half not yet fully grown. But in wanting, the wanting is you. That itch, the extra glance passing the window, the several schemes turned over and over at night, are wholly you, not a you with a piece missing, waiting for the piece to be filled in. Got, the happiness is you; hung in the wardrobe and forgotten, that flatness is you too; not got, the moment the eyes dim is you as well. Wholeness is not pieced together; to piece together, there must first be a gap and then a thing to fill it. The moment of wanting is a real time of this place; the moment of getting, the moment of losing, are too. None of these moments is the missing piece of another. The third kind, getting and still feeling something missing, is that “me waiting to be made whole” hanging there all the while; while it hangs, nothing got can fill it, because the gap was never in that thing; it is in the sentence “this one now doesn’t count.”

Does this mean one shouldn’t want?

No. Wanting is itself what being alive looks like.

The pot of flowers on the windowsill, after a few days, has all its leaves leaning toward the window. The Virginia creeper at the foot of the wall climbs higher year by year. A seed in the soil pushes its root down and its shoot up. Water flows downhill, iron filings gather toward the magnet, a hungry cat winds round people’s legs.

All of these are “toward.” Being is not a thing that stays put; the moment it is, it leans toward some side: toward light, toward water, toward warmth, toward another being. This leaning is not taught by anyone, nor pushed by anyone; it is this place, meeting light, meeting water, meeting other things, leaning over by itself.

That the flower grows toward the light is easily said to mean “the flower grows like this in order to get light,” as if the flower first had a goal in mind and then acted on it. This way of speaking is carried over from people. The flower only grows toward the light; what it grows into, how long it grows, whether it meets a hailstorm or a good rain, none of it is fixed in advance. The leaning has a direction but no end point; there is “toward,” but no “arrived.” Every extra inch it grows toward the light is already its being, full; it doesn’t count only once it has grown to some day.

Human wanting is this leaning showing itself in a place that can talk and scheme. Hungry and wanting to eat is the body leaning toward rice; lonely and wanting company is this place leaning toward another place; seeing a good thing and wanting it in your hand is the eyes and the heart leaning that way. Leaning is being alive; the only thing that doesn’t lean at all is that imagined room, indifferent to everything.

The trouble is not the leaning, but that, while leaning, one shoulders the sentence “when I get it, I will be whole.”

The flower grows toward the light, and every day of growing is full. A person leans toward a thing, and every day of leaning is full too; only people often treat these days as “not yet arrived,” draft days, waiting for the day of getting to make good on them. Leaning then turns from a living thing into a debt.

Within wanting there is another distinction to be made clear: wanting, and caring.

Wanting is leaning toward a thing and wanting it to come to one’s own place: eaten, used up, worn on the body, kept at home, one’s own. Caring is leaning toward another being and letting it be in its own place: hoping he is well, worrying whether he is cold, waiting for him to come back; he is not in one’s hands, and never was.

The two often get mixed. Caring for someone, leaning and leaning, one comes to want him: to have his being under one’s own management, to know where he is every moment, to be told first whatever he thinks; his edge had better be open to oneself, better still not there at all. At this point the force of the leaning is still there, but its direction has quietly reversed: it was going toward him; now it has become taking him in to oneself.

This is “mine.”

A child hugging a toy and shouting “mine!” is the “I” just grown, and its first act is to fence a thing in. Grown-ups are the same, only what they fence in is bigger: my house, my car, my child, my man, my woman, my time, my life. “Mine” is a line the “I” stretches outward; wherever it reaches, it fences that in.

Some lines are good: “my child” speaks of a care, a responsibility; when he has a fever at night, the one who gets up and carries him to hospital is me. But pull the line tight and it becomes possession: my child must grow as I think; my person may have nothing I don’t know about. The one fenced in is treated as a thing, a thing under my management. He is a being, one that can’t be got into and can’t be taken in; but in the word “mine,” he is pressed flat into a piece of property.

Possession is caring gone crooked. Its fault is not caring too much, but forgetting that what lies at the other end of the leaning is another time of being, not a thing.

Why can’t he be taken in? To take a person in, his being would have to come and be in this place. But when he hurts, it is in his place that he hurts; when he thinks, it is in his place that he thinks; the turning over when he can’t sleep at night is done in his bed. However tight the hold, what is held in the hand is only the side of him facing this way. The line of “mine” can tie down a title, can tie down days lived together, but cannot tie down that one time of his being. It can’t be tied, yet one insists on tying, and the line cuts into the flesh, and both ends are hurt.

Leaning can go crooked another way: it hardens.

A flower turning toward the light, when the light changes direction, slowly turns with it. A hardened leaning, when the light changes direction, stays fixed toward the old side. Someone loved a person when young; later they parted, and haven’t seen each other for decades. He has kept in his heart how she looked at twenty: hair in a plait, a little pointed tooth showing when she smiled. That look is what he leans toward. One year, at a class reunion, he sees her: hair white, heavier, speaking in a completely different way. He sits there, unable to say whether it is disappointment or something else. A great part of what he has cared for all along is a look long gone; of every day the person sitting opposite has been through in these decades, he knows not one.

Prejudice is a leaning that no longer moves with being: its direction was fixed at some time long ago, and has never moved since.

In gaining there is being, and in losing there is being too; and losing is often the deepest place of gaining, like ore buried in the very heart of a mountain. People feel only that gaining is being and losing is empty; but in the moment of losing, being is not a bit less: the gripping hand opens, empty, and the emptiness of that moment is a full emptiness; the pain, a full pain. The mother watching her child leave home, the one whose money is all spent, the one whose family has broken up: the day of losing is, for each, a whole day.

Gaining and losing are both leaning on its way: leaning over and touching is gaining; touching and then being carried away is losing; never touching is not getting what one seeks. All these are things really happening in this place, with their bitterness and their sweetness. Only, none of them can make this place a bit more being, or a bit less.

Wanting is not only a human matter either.

The roots of a tree spend their whole life reaching toward where there is water. It wants water, wants it with great tenacity; meeting a stone, it goes round; unable to go round, it squeezes through a crack, and once in, slowly splits the stone. Yet not for a single day has it felt it lacked something and so was not whole; every day of reaching toward water, it is fully a tree.

A dog waits for its master. Every afternoon a little after five, it runs to the door and lies there, ears pricked, listening to footsteps in the stairwell. When others come up, it doesn’t stir; when its master’s footsteps are still two floors below, it is already up and wagging its tail. The days the master is away on business, it still goes to lie there at five, lies there till dark, then walks slowly back to its basket. The one it wants hasn’t come. Those few evenings, lying by the door, it waits fully.

A bee flies among the flowers, landing on one after another, leaving one after another. It takes the nectar, and the flower, its pollen carried off by the bee, sets seed. The bee wants the nectar, the flower wants the seed; neither takes the other in, neither possesses the other; two beings leaning in different directions touch for a moment, each gets what it needs, and each goes its way.

These leanings all move by themselves. No one pushes, and no goal hangs in front first. The root reaching toward water is reaching itself; the dog going to the door is waiting itself; the bee flying toward the flower is flying itself. They are always wanting, and never lacking.

The child who hugged the toy and wouldn’t let go grew up. One day, sorting through old things, he dug that toy out from the bottom of a cupboard, covered in dust, one wheel missing.

He held it and looked at it a while, remembered himself in the mall that day, crying till his face was red, and laughed. Then he wiped it off and put it on the windowsill.