What We Get Instead

On not getting what you want, and doing the right thing anyway.

Lately I have been thinking about wanting. Not the cinematic kind where the music swells and everything resolves beautifully, but the small everyday wants that hum in the background. The job that will finally make you feel legitimate. The apartment you are certain will transform you into the kind of adult who never loses their keys. The relationship that promises to sand down your more chaotic corners.

Wanting is persuasive. It promises upgrades. It insists that once you get this one thing, life will finally fall into place. You will feel settled. You will know what you are doing. You will floss nightly.

But for me, that has never been the case.
I get the thing, or I do not, and there I am.
Still myself.
Still losing my phone in my own hand.
Still buying produce with the confidence of someone who has mysteriously forgotten their entire history with produce.

And before I go any further, I want to say this clearly because it matters. I have been given opportunities that many people would do anything for. My work has opened doors I never imagined I would walk through. I am grateful for my life in the kind of deep, daily way that feels like an exhale.

Which is why it surprises me that wanting still walks right in, settling itself on the couch as if it lives here, no matter how grateful I already am.

There was a job once that I was sure would change everything. I walked in carrying my hopes like a precarious stack of plates. I imagined the ripple effect, the new clients, the new me. I had an entire movie montage in my head about how this would unlock the next chapter of my life. And then the whole thing fizzled out so quietly I wondered if it had even happened at all. Nothing changed, except me. I became slightly more acquainted with humility, which is never the souvenir you ask for but often the one you end up keeping.

I am starting to suspect that not getting what I want has saved me more than once. I have the instincts of a toddler running toward a swimming pool with a popsicle and absolutely no plan. I want things because they sparkle. I want things because they feel like shortcuts to becoming someone I have not yet done the work to become.

The truth is, you do not get the things you do not believe in. Not really.
You might hold them for a moment, but they will not stay.
Life seems determined to hand you only what matches your actual insides.
Which is extremely inconvenient when my insides are mostly asking for snacks and permission to take a nap.

What I am learning, slowly and unevenly, is that the wanting quiets when I actually spend time with myself. Real time. Not numbed out time. When I treat myself with a little tenderness, when I take care of the person who has to accompany me through this entire earthly tour, I become better at everything else. A better boss. A better brother. A better godfather. A better friend. A worker among workers instead of the exhausted martyr I sometimes audition to be.

People talk endlessly about how to get what you want, as if desire is a treasure map and the prize is a perfectly arranged life. But the life that truly matters seems to grow from who you are, not what you acquire. It grows the way a room slowly grows around the person who lives in it. Not from the mood boards. Not from the intentions. From the quiet truth of how you show up.

There have been seasons where I did not get what I wanted, and instead I got something else entirely. Space. Clarity. A sense of humor I had misplaced somewhere along the way. The ability to sit in my own company without looking for an exit sign. These things reshaped me more honestly than any achievement ever has.

When I decorate a room, the beauty never comes from the perfect plan. It comes from returning to the space again and again with a kind of polite persistence. Listening for its truth. Adjusting my assumptions. Realizing that what I thought it needed is almost never what it actually needs.

Being an adult feels like that.
Not getting what you want and doing the right thing anyway.
Less conquering, more cooperating.
Less insisting, more listening.
Less forcing, more allowing.

Maybe the point is not to get everything you want.
Maybe the point is to become someone who can love the life that is already here.
Someone who can look at the chipped bowl and the morning light and the stubbornly ordinary Tuesday and think, you know what, this is not only enough, it is a small miracle.

A life that feels lived rather than chased.
A life with room to breathe.
A life that fits because it grew out of who you actually are.
And on most days, a life that feels more than enough.

Love,

Colin