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Freedom is glorious. But freedom also torments us because it requires to
create our own goal.
Did you know that fewer people get depressed during war than in peacetime?
In a war, everything is important. Day to day, you know exactly what to
do. Your life may be frightening, but the struggle to survive gives you
direction and drive. You don't waste any time trying to figure out what
you're worht or what you're supposed to do with your life. You just try
to keep alive, save your home, help your neighbors. The reason we love to
watch films about people whose lives are in danger is because every move
is loaded with meaning.
When there's no emergency to rise to, we have to create goals that have
meaning. You can create such goals if you know what your dream is--but
this is a relatively new way of living. The old way to live was to let
necessity creat your goal; The new way is to use your dream to create
your goal. We have had very little practice at this new way.
The reason you don't know what you want is that something inside you is
stopping you from knowing. Your dreams are obscured by some kind of
internal conflict.
Our culture(the United States) is full of simpleminded myths, such as "If
you really wanted something badly enough, you'd go out and get it," and
"If you're sabotaging yourself, you lack character." Nobody ever asks the
obvious question: "Why would anybody want to do himself harm by
sabotaging himself?" It takes curiosity to find the answer to that
question, and judgmental people alway lack curiosity.
The excerpt from the book "I could do anything" by Barbara Sher with
Barbara Smith 1994
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