What do I Want and Where am I Going?

Want.  It’s not a word that I’ve been encouraged to use or even think about.  It’s a selfish verb, conjuring up nearly every Seven Deadly Sin that I can remember, lust, envy, pride.  So whether want is a sin, something bad or wicked or however else you choose to call it, do you think it’s wrong to want?  Do you want?  What do you want?

But we are bombarded with wants, through media and advertising.  We are always being told that our lives are incomplete without X, Y and Z, life will be more meaningful if only we part with yet more cash, we will happier and healthier for having, having, having.

Here’s a fascinating quote:

“It is estimated that a century ago the average man had 72 wants, of which 16 were regarded as necessities. Today, the average man is estimated to have 474 wants, 94 of which are regarded as necessities. A century ago, 200 articles were urged upon the average man by salesmanship—but today there are 32,000 articles which require sales resistance. Man’s necessities are few—his wants, infinite.”

The scariest thing?  That was written in 1956.  Yes, 1956.  Where do you think we stand today?

Anyway.  That’s not the want I’m talking about.  I’m talking about realistic ones, fair ones.  Because at the end of the day we all have reasonable desires, wants.  I think sometimes it’s important to sit down and take stock of our lives, what do we want from it?

Parents probably are right to discourage children from ‘wanting’ but do they at the same stifle the other kind?  Maybe for some the idea of their children growing out of their cuteness and becoming adults in their own right is a horrifying prospect so they baby them.   The result?  Clueless grown kids, and possibly spoilt for good measure too.  Parents have a responsibility to prepare and train their children for adulthood, it’s not something that can be avoided or should be.  Children grow up.  Fact.  Of course I don’t believe in the other extreme which is prevalent in modern society, the precocious sexualised mini adult at the grand age of five.  Please let them be children but prepare them, train them as they go.

Some families are laid back by nature but that doesn’t preclude this training, instilling responsibility and a strong sense of identity, of self is not against this credo.  In fact, bizarrely, in my experience of the families around me, it’s the laid back, chilled out families who have raised the strongest children.  Individuals with a strong sense of self and a direction.  Give children a direction, help them face the future rather than fear it.

I don’t do goals.  I don’t do change.  I don’t do future.  I don’t think it’s done me any good or is doing me any good.  Like my writing, I need to start planning and preparing before I set out on my journey.  I have to establish what I want from life and where I’m headed.  Like any physical journey.  I need a plan and I need a map.

Doing that is not going to be easy but I think it’s going to be clearer.  More purposeful.  I’m fed up of drifting through life.  It’s easy to feel like a failure when you miss out on things along the way, yet you had no idea that they were there.  I need focus.

Get Your Kicks

It was a catchy song, always had been, but they’d never heard it before.  The kind of song you can tap your feet to.  Or click your fingers.  Or whistle or hum.  Or sing again and again.  They played it one more time before drawing out a map unearthed from a forgotten corner of the bookshelf, unfolding its creases carefully.

It winds from Chicago to LA.  More than two thousand miles all the way.

The crossing of a continent by a now barely existent ribbon, nonexistent on this map at least.  Their fingers touched the paper, tentatively.  Then they bowed their heads over, focusing on the small places names dotted here and there, humming and part singing lines of the song, trying to recall all the place names mentioned.  Slowly their fingers traced a journey over the worn paper.

Get your kicks …

A nostalgic technicolour vision of history loomed, like mental postcards with neon lights.  Diners, architecture, cars, desert, railroads …  It was enticing, like the silk laden and spice scented promise of an Eastern bazaar to some travellers, but now they had a different dream, a different pilgrimage calling to them.

They ran the lyrics through one more time, more confidently tracing the rough path across the flat, limited scope of the map.  The places were becoming familiar.

Saint Louis.  Joplin.  Oklahoma City.  Amarillo.  Flagstaff.  Winona, don’t forget Winona.  Kingman.  Barstow.  San Bernardino.

A little more dreaming, a little more research, a little more planning.

It was time to get their kicks on Route 66.

This week’s Red Writing Hood Prompt was ‘Soundtrack of Our Words’, ‘to find the song that will be played during the pivotal scene in the movie based on your magnum opus. With that song playing, write that pivotal scene – it’s your choice whether you write it as a screen play or as it’s played out in your novel.’

Now I don’t dream of ‘making it big’ so I’ve just created a scene with a soundtrack, or perhaps actually a scene based around a soundtrack.  Oh and I’ve listened to it an awful lot more times than the suggested three or four, more than the ‘just enough listening to allow the song to become a stronger part of us without driving us crazier than we already are’.  Crazy but closer to the word count than I usually am!