What Do You Really Want?

Let's run a small experiment. Describe the life of your dreams; but on one condition: your answer cannot contain your family's expectations, the applause of those around you, the road society finds reasonable, or the shiny lives you see on social media. You struggled, didn't you? Because the difficulty of the question "what do you really want" lies not in the absence of an answer, but in whom the answer you already have belongs to. The answers we give are often not our own; all those outside voices cover over the inner one.

One way to test whether a goal really belongs to you is this: don't ask how you'd feel once you reach it; ask what you'd have to put up with every day to pursue it. Goals whose outcome you love but whose process you can't bear are usually not yours.

If a career path everyone calls successful is drying you out from the inside, it deserves a pause and a closer look. Or, on the contrary, if a field that doesn't look impressive from the outside keeps you alive, maybe your path is there. If a person builds their life solely on outside approval, after a while they can win a great deal and lose themselves.

The answer to this question doesn't come right away. Sometimes a person finds it by understanding what they don't want. Which environment shrinks you? After which kind of work do you not even notice the time passing? With which people does your mind open up? Which dream both frightens and excites you?

The search for meaning doesn't have to start with grand philosophical sentences. Sometimes it starts from a very practical place: what kind of day do I want to live? Whom do I want to be around? Which problem, when I work on it, raises my self-respect?

What do you really want is not a one-time answer; it's a compass to be consulted again and again throughout life. As a person changes, the answer deepens. What matters is being able to decide with your own, more honest voice — not someone else's.