The wanting machine
I remember being a kid, my brother and I hearing the ice cream truck's jingle from two blocks away, Pavlov's invisible hand desperately wanting that dollar from my parents. The scramble. The handoff. The first bite. Sticky sugary bliss flooding every sense.
Fast-forward. Months of Zoom calls, pitching until my voice cracked, chasing that fundraising round. By some miracle, the wires come in. Electric high surges. Champagne with the team. Victory.
But not long after, as the bubbles fade, the familiar itch returns. Something's missing again.
It's not the high I crave. It's the glitch in the wanting machine, the ever reliable device of foolproof design, its gears churning since those ice cream days, always demanding more deals, more zeros, more proof I'm enough.
For a moment, the machine stalls. A gap opens. No grinding alerts of lack.
Happiness slips in not from getting, but from that brief silence where wanting pauses. Actually, it's never gone anywhere, it's just the wanting that slips away.
I see the lifelong quest of stacking enough "getting" so the machine finally quits for good. And how wanting to end it is the same illusion in a loftier dress.
I feel my relationship to the machine changing. I listen for what's beneath the noise. And look where it's telling me to look. And when I look into the gaps, sufficiency stares back.
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