Back in the early 1980s… when I went to camp… there was an interesting artist papering the sidewalks and buildings of NYC with pieces of colored paper with one-liners. Jenny Holzer went on to make a serious mark in conceptual art.
Now, I’m a summer camp director. I had a to look up what ‘conceptual art’ meant. I’m more of a Monet, Penley and Jim Lee kind of guy.
One piece that Ms. Holzer put up everywhere – including on hats – was this phrase:
Protect me from what I want.
This is something I completely understand. You do, too… but maybe not at first. Let me explain with a camp situation.
A Trip to Canteen
You are heading to canteen. What will you choose? Skittles or Legendairy Ice cream? Hershey’s or Air Heads? Hmm….
Actually, you want all of them. And, let’s say some really generous CIT is running show and wants to make a ‘positive’ mark by granting your wish.
You get it all. Everything you want. So, you walk away with a hoard of candy and start enjoying it all. You got what you wanted.
Including the stomach ache that comes from eating too much of the sugary stuff. And the side-eye glances from your friends who only got one of those candies. And that fuzzy feeling on your teeth that says ‘yikes – cavities inbound!’
Please protect me from what I want. See what I mean?
“But wait a second, Cole – that would just be a one-off thing! That doesn’t happen every day.”
I disagree. In fact, I think wanting things – much more than what we need right now – is a feature of our human nature, not a bug. We humans, left to our natural system, always want more.
Why? It has to do with our long-ago ancestors just barely scrapping by just to exist and create more humans who, eventually, turned into you and me.
Go enough months and years and decades and millennia with barely enough to eat and you’ll change the brain of every human that follows.
That pinging in our brain saying ‘Want more! Take more!’ comes from a natural place. And, in this time of abundance, it’s a natural instinct of which we need to be thoughtful. Because it leads to stomach aches, anxiety (did enough people like my post? do I have enough followers?), and more.
The Protection
So, if this is such a big (and natural) concern of ours, how we do we protect ourselves from what we want? Two things. The first is being grateful for that which we already have in our lives.
The second is choosing to be courageous enough to make a choice that is different than what your body and your mind and your friends want. (See how I worked in all three of our values there?)
As you get older, your wants will change. Just like the boy and tree we read about at campfire each summer.
The question is, will you be thoughtful about your wants? Will you protect yourself for those easy wants that lead to negative results – screen time, I’m looking at you – and those hard wants that lead to good things instead? (Ok, ok… I’ll go stretch more now.)
Be grateful. Be thoughtful. Be courageous. (And… stay warm this weekend!)
