What everyone truly wants.

What is the most valuable thing in life? Everyone has their own personal answer to this interesting question, but there are a few which many people will all have in common. Power, money, fame, women (or men), x-boxes, facebook friends...the list goes one. But what is the ultimate goal of having all of these things?

Take for example the age-old question, "Which is better to have, power, money or fame?". People argue, "With fame you have influence, and influence is power!" or "With money you have power and therefore you are famous!" or "With power you can take money, and then still be famous!" These are all ridiculous answers to a riduculous question. True, many people want all of these things and some will stop at nothing to get them, but they are still all a means to an end.

Take, for example, this quote, most often attributed to Jim Carrey, "I wish everyone could get rich and famous and everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that’s not the answer."

People think that these things are the end, and that once they get them, they will be happy. Once they get them, however, they realize that these things were not what they were truly looking for. They are still empty.

Let us start at the beginning, so as to figure out why people are so confused as to what they really want. Way back to preshistoric times when people still lived in caves, and grunted, and had triceratops steaks for dinner. (If they were lucky enough to kill one with those wooden spears that they threw.[so easy, even a caveman can do it]) Let's pretend that Mr. Caveman was sitting alone in his cave munching on his triceratops steak, when cute Ms. (Not a Mrs.) Cavewoman comes along. Mr. Caveman, for all practical purposes, is rich. Back then, the cavemen didn't measure wealth by cars, or yachts, or even little shiny gems that they found in rocks for that matter. If you were eating, then you were pretty well off.

So like I was saying, Mr. Caveman is getting fat and happy when Ms. Cavewoman comes along. Ms. Cavewoman is very hungry, and wants some of that nice triceratops steak, so she comes into the cave. Mr. Caveman is so happy to have some company that he willingly shares some of his hard-earned meat with her. Never mind the fact that she is nearly as hairy as he is, and could probably beat up lots of today's full grown men in a dark ally. There are many hand gestures and grunts involved, but I will leave those to your own imagination. From then on, Ms. Cavewoman began to come over to Mr. Caveman's cave more often because he gave her some food that one time. Maybe he was a nice cave man, maybe not--but she still got what she wanted. Whether or not they live happily ever after is a moot point because we have reached the end of my literary illustration.

We saw that Mr. Caveman was willing to trade some of his hard earned meat for Ms. Cavewoman's company. We, as all-knowing historical anthropologists, look at this situation and know for a fact (If you don't beleive me, go re-read the above paragraph) that Ms. Cavewoman kept coming over because he gave her some meat, not because there was some mystical attraction between the two of them that made them fall in love and bear forth many children to populate the earth. Mr. Caveman, not being a historical anthropoligist like we are, doesn't think about her true motives--he is just happy to be hanging around Ms. Cavewoman.

Before the story, you will recall that I was saying that power and money and fame are all means to an end. People don't seem to understand this. They think that they will be happy once they get all of these, but they are wrong.

While I used a somewhat humorous story to try and get a very serious point across, it still has some valid information. Subconciously, people associate power and money and fame, etc. with being loved, because their subconcious associates all of those things with having people around you. People know that others like to be around people who give them things, so they think that by having lots of things, people will want to be around them more. This is true in a certain sense, but in reality they are cheating themselves. They are surrounding themselves with people who do not truly want to be around them, but the things that they have.

People say that they want power, and money, and fame, but what they ultimately want is to be loved. To have someone who GETS them. People want to be understood, to have someone they can tell anything to and who will help them through anything. Someone who will ask them why they are crying, and then not get angry when the answer given is "nothing". Someone to laugh with them at stupid things, then cry over the sad ones. Someone to whisper secrets to at night, and sing loudly with from a mountain top. Someone to just be near them and be with them because they want to be.

They not only want this for themselves, but to be the reciprocal of it in the other person's life. For the most part, people don't even truly understand this until they gain what they thought they had been seeking, and find that there is another peak beyond the one they have just climbed. There is another award to get, another car to buy, another wife to marry. Think to yourself, what is it that you truly want. Do you place value on riches or influence, or the people that want to be around you because you are you, not because of what you have?