Wanting Without Putting Life on Hold

I want things. I want money, to finish books, for certain projects to grow, particular experiences, relationships, places. There are things I want only a little, and others I can want for years. Some disappear almost as quickly as they appear; others begin to organize decisions, time, work, and resources. I do not need to find a higher purpose behind every desire. I can want money because I want money, and write a book because I want that book. Later, I might discover what part of my history plays into that desire, what else I am seeking through it, or why that particular form appeals to me, but I do not need to know any of that to recognize something much simpler: I want this. Life keeps taking shape. Some forms appear without my having asked for them, and others I seek out; some last seconds, and others may stay with me for decades. Wanting can simply mean wanting a form to appear, continue, change, or disappear.

Sometimes that wanting goes no further. At other times, I decide to move toward the form I desire. I want to write a book, so I write; I want to graduate, so I study; I want a certain amount of money, so I begin organizing actions to obtain it. A future possibility then changes what I do today, and I see no problem with that. Much of building anything consists precisely in allowing something that does not yet exist to influence present decisions. I can even do things I dislike because they lead toward a form I want. I study a subject I detest because I need to pass it to graduate, and if tomorrow I am told I no longer need it, I will probably drop it. It was a means to an end. But while I was studying it, it was still part of my life. What serves as a means is life, too.

That is why I am not very convinced by the opposition between living in the present and building a future. If we took it seriously, any project would become suspect. Committing to something means bringing the future into today’s decisions. I can save for years, study, work more, give up other possibilities, or devote an enormous part of my life to something that does not yet exist without thereby living outside the present. The problem begins elsewhere. It begins with a perfectly ordinary phrase that sometimes contains more than it seems to: when I graduate, when I get promoted, when I get married, when I have money, when I finish this project. Often those phrases simply describe a real sequence. When I graduate, I will be able to perform certain roles; when I have the money, I will be able to buy that thing. But sometimes behind the “when” there is a “then, at last.” When this happens, then, at last.

At that point, the future form may stop being merely what I am moving toward and become the place I live from before it exists. What is happening now then begins to be defined as a “not yet”: I have not graduated yet, I have not arrived yet, I do not have it yet, I am not that yet. And here I see a difference that matters to me. Studying in order to graduate is one thing; living as the person who has not yet graduated is another. Building a project is one thing; living from within the project that does not yet exist is another. In the first case, a future form gives direction to my actions. In the second, the life unfolding now begins to function as a waiting room for another reality. I am beginning to call this displacement.

It does not depend on how long there is to go. I can work toward a future form for twenty years and be here; I can also displace myself in seconds. That is why the problem is not present versus future. The future can be full of me without my having taken up residence in it. I can spend an entire afternoon planning something ten years away, and if I am planning, that is exactly what is happening. I can recall something from thirty years ago and be remembering. I can imagine, fantasize, anticipate. The time my thought points toward does not decide where I am.

When I am here, I am here.

I find that sentence hard to define because, as soon as I try to turn it into an action, I spoil it. Being here is not watching myself be here, monitoring myself, reminding myself to return to the present, or trying to reach a state called presence. If I am thinking about how to be present, I can even displace myself toward a presence I do not yet have. That is why the difference is not whether the content of my experience belongs to the past, the present, or the future. It lies elsewhere. If I am having sex but my experience becomes fixed on “I do not want to ejaculate,” I have already placed myself in a future ejaculation I am trying to avoid; I am not simply in the sex that is happening. If an entire experience begins to organize itself around “when this is over,” something of me has already taken up residence in that later moment. I am not saying that is wrong. I am not trying to construct a morality of presence. I am simply distinguishing two different ways of being in an experience.

Being here does not mean settling, either. I can look at what is happening and simply say: this is how it is. Not that it is good, that I like it, or that I want to preserve it. This is how it is. And precisely because it is how it is, I can move toward another form. Presence does not mean staying. It does not mean the present form has to satisfy me. I can want to change it with all my strength. The difference is that the movement begins where I am, rather than where I am not yet. Perhaps that is what the “when” can conceal: while a form does not yet exist, I can imagine it with a stability it will almost never have once it arrives.

For five years, I can think “when I graduate” and place graduation up ahead as a fixed point. Then the day comes. I graduate. There is a ceremony, photographs, a celebration; it may be one of the most important days of my life. And then it is over. The next day, I send out résumés. I get a job or I do not. I learn, make mistakes, pay bills, move to another company, perhaps practice my profession for forty years, or perhaps discover that I do not want to practice it. What seemed for years like an arrival immediately becomes another form within a life that continues. That does not mean we never arrive. Of course we do. A book can be finished, a degree completed, a financial target reached, a house bought, a wedding held. Forms have real points of completion. What does not seem to reach completion with them is our unfolding existence.

I finish the book, and it is still Tuesday. The book may matter enormously to me and may change my life; there is simply now a finished book within a life that continues. Something similar happens to me with phrases like “when I graduate, I will be a lawyer.” I understand the everyday meaning perfectly: I will have a degree, I will be qualified to practice, perhaps I will work as a lawyer for forty years. What troubles me is something else: now I am this, and afterward I will be that, as though there were a present photograph that would one day be replaced by a definitive one. It feels truer to think that I am studying, I graduate, I work as a lawyer, perhaps I continue, perhaps I change, while my existence keeps unfolding. The form can be enormous without encompassing all that I am.

And something even simpler can happen: that form may never arrive. I am writing a book, I want to finish it, I work for years, and I die tomorrow. The book remains unfinished. There is no need to redeem it by saying that what mattered was the journey. I wanted to finish it, and I did not. That form remained incomplete. But while I was writing, life was not waiting for the last page before it began; it was happening. I can die with unfinished books, trips I never took, conversations still to be had, and projects still open. That means some forms remained incomplete. Not necessarily that there was a complete version of my life waiting behind them.

That is why the fact that tomorrow is not guaranteed does not invite me to squeeze the present dry in desperation or abandon long projects. I can build something for thirty years from now knowing that I may never see it. Tomorrow is simply not here yet. Today, my desire for that form is here, along with my work, my decisions, my imagination, and my plans. If tomorrow comes, I will live it then. And if it does not, there will be forms left incomplete.

Perhaps that, finally, is wanting without putting life on hold. Not wanting less, not detaching myself from the outcome, not settling for what there is. I can want something that does not yet exist with all my strength, move toward it for years, and suffer if it does not happen. What I do not need is to live from there before it arrives.

The form may remain unfinished. Life need not wait.

Today, there is this. And when I am here, I am here.