Want to vs.Don't want to

On a recent visit to a friends house, I met their baby boy of six months. Having arrived near the toddlers dinnertime, I got to witness the professional couple struggle to feed this "obviously contented" baby for more than an hour.

 I watched as the couple bickered and argued about the best way to get baba to eat. They even resorted to tricking the kid, teasing him with a dummy, only to swap it with food at the last moment. He then promptly spat the food out with a giggle. He wasn't eating, simply because he wasn't hungry yet. But, knowing the benefits of timely nutrition, the new parents stumbled and plotted about ways to feed their child, hoping to give him a good start in life.

 The most disturbing divide between people is not one of race, but the one between the "wants to" and the "does not want to" of the world, and that gap is big. These polar opposites are defined by those that want to make something of this life for themselves and by themselves, versus those that don't want to put in the effort, choosing to wait for others to give them a life.

 Stated as bluntly as that, one can't help but wonder who would wait for someone else to give them a life. Yet, we meet people daily, just waiting. They wait for the goverment to give them jobs. They wait for teachers to educate them. They wait for leaders to engage them. Good leaders then feel obligated to feed the "does not want to" with sound education, hopes and dreams, giving them a good start in life, only to have it all spat out with a giggle. 

Apart from the leaders sickening behaviour enslaving the complacent into dependency on hand-outs and hand-ups, I often wonder why the "does not want to" are so reluctant to invest effort into their lives. Why wouldn't they want to educate themselves and get left with crippling student loans? They must get a job that lets them buy a beautiful home, a twenty year mortgage hanging around their necks, prohibiting them from exploring life. 

Maybe the "does not want to" spits it all out at the start, because once we get on that slippery slope of financial slash materialistic "independence," there is just no real recovery. I will say, standing in their shoes, the benefits of the pseudo-success put on the platter by the "wants to" is not an attractive reason to learn and grow.

And maybe that the point! Life and success may need to be redefined to exclude the trappings of success that force us to sell our souls, and forsake our callings, just to survive. This year I have elected to be less judgemental towards the "does not want to," and learn from their example, looking at success in a fresh way, where "I am" isn't replaced by "I have."