What do people want, more than anything else? I always thought it was happiness or success or companionship, but maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s control.
I mean, who wouldn’t want to have control? We study so that we can potentially control our professions. We exercise so that we can control our bodies while influencing our cells. We believe strongly in freedom, so that we can work where we want and buy what we want and marry who we want. It’s all about control.
But let’s make up a hypothetical person, and let’s make him male so that I don’t have to keep writing he/she. He eats a healthy diet, which he monitors and controls. He’s applying for a better job, and he goes through this process intelligently and systematically. His every action is done confidently and his every relationship is maintained with time and care. He lives his life the way a good scientist tends to his experiments: All things adhere to a system, and no important priority is forgotten.
But even with his healthy diet, he could still get sick. Even with his job applications, there could be people who get the position instead of him because of whatever reason. And no matter how well he maintains his relationships, he could still lose his connections to friends and family by tragedy, or conflict, or simply because people change or move on.
And that’s when I’m not sure anymore. Do we really want control? Is the hero of western media the one who always knows what to do and who to trust and what to believe in? No, the hero of western media makes all kinds of mistakes and doesn’t know what he/she will do half the time. But there’s still some degree of control. We don’t pay to watch heroes spend the entire movie debating whether to act or not act.
Well, most of the time we don’t.
So it’s not just control, it’s passion. Everyone wants control, to a point, but it’s not the thing we value most.