You Can't Always Get What You Want

But You Get What You Need

I revisited a few Stones songs from my youth in a car ride up the coast recently; Mick Jagger’s yowling command lodged in my mind. I am not the most raving Rolling Stones fan by all means, but I have this song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in a loop today in my mind. “But if you try sometime, you find, you get what you need.” That line always tripped me up. Try sometime? When? I never particularly liked the meaning of this song. What do you mean you can’t get what you want? Who says? Barrel through! Take charge! Ahhh, the hymn of the Gen X twenties.

At 54 (just celebrated a birthday), I am on a quest to ensure the want aligns with the need, and battle all the contrary voices in my head that jockey to get in and fuck up that very simple process. I also understand I have everything I need. Often the wants that are not aligned with the needs fade away into the ether. I try and forget all the wants that fly at me, laced in insecurity, looking to fill any undesignated space. What I can’t have can morph into a desperation. When that starts to happen, I feel manic, emotions heightened, wiping my nose on my sleeve as the world seems to fold into me. I leave long messages for girlfriends. I’m sad. I’m lonely. When can I have what I want?

When this ten minutes of arresting of self passes, I always understand the same philosophy…when I lead with love, I receive what I need.

You can’t lose when you lead with love. If you are in a tizzy and convinced about some diabolical plan someone is hatching around you that you adored only hours before, then you are in the wants not being met category. Sure, make notes, listen to your desires, but then focus on what you need in that moment. Are your feet dry and in shoes? Is your thirst quenched? Do you have food? Have you slept? Are you enjoying the sunshine on your face? Do you recall a memory with that person that makes you smile? Who told you they cared for you last? How did that make you feel? Soon you will pull out of the want and be so ready to jump into your car and get to the next adventure. You will forget that pulling want connected to insecurity and fear. You will be in the need. Need to love, need to express love…

Need to give others a fucking break.

Your want and needs will be focused from the heart, not the head. I watch my head go in circles when I don’t have what I want. I persecute myself for not being smart enough to line all the cards up in the right row, and then I get suspicious I am in a blind spot, and then I usually cry, or divert in some art museum, and the creativity stops the mashing gnashing of the mind’s need and puts me back in a place of my heart full and beating. Yeah, if you are thinking, “What the hell is she talking about?” for one moment instead of accusing someone for not loving you enough or giving you what you want, think, if everyone got what they needed right now, what would that look like?

We all would be completely satisfied eating donuts in the sun.

We want to grab that which is not immediately before us, versus seeing the shaping of the bigger need; the one that calls to us in our dreams in fits and starts, or flashes before us, a friendly surprise. I am not suggesting you give up on your idea of marriage because it hasn’t come to pass, or one million dollars because you are not making enough, or that move to a new place which seems so daunting - dream big -but right now in this current moment, what does your heart need? Can you enjoy the journey to get there where your needs are beyond met, delicious and exciting? Surely not to chastise the people around you for not being with the same program, place or timeline as us. We don’t want to hang around with people just like us. That would be super boring. We want variety and curiosity with others but then we want them to give us just what we want.

Focus on what you need, and make it heart-centered.

We rarely listen to our hearts. They just beat away (hopefully). The heart quickens with exercise and excitement. In sorrow, the heart can hurt and cause pain. The heart is not exclusive to these feelings, having multi-layers that are full of nuance. My heart can speak to me, calming the desire to slay and get what I think I want now. I have to calm myself down so I can get out of my head and into my heart, and consider all the conditions and situations around me.

Is my Christmas what I want it to be this year? Honestly is it ever? So much pressure on Christmas and what it means. I marvel instead on where I was this time last year, which looks incredibly radically different than where I am now. I am so happy and at peace with what I have received in 2023, that I needed, to focus on not getting what I want for one day or night is a slap in the face of the Universe and destiny. Instead I get to marvel about the ideas I have for 2024 versus arguing with some drunken relative who doesn’t seem to have evolved at all in the last year and could care less. I have to hang with evolving people. I get crazed in stagnation. It’s part of my astrological makeup.

We have a vision that could be shaped in a way that we have not even yet seen that which we want. Big dreams. Some so big, they make us go “no.” I say yes. Have permission to look at what you want in the biggest more incredulous way, and then get out of your head telling you the logistics are too much. The Japanese have a philosophical concept called “ma” that is the space between the edges, between the beginning and end, the space in between literally meaning the gap, space or pause. What we create in our pause is so profound and powerful, yet we think we have to be rushing around affirming we are loved or seen all the time. Leaning into “ma” I hear my heart, and it pushes me to those spaces and edges where lie some of the ideas that get me so excited with possibility I hope for more years than I have left on this earth!

Our desires can skew small because we come from a place of lack, not from trust deep in the heart. As we round the bend today on Christmas Eve, I won’t necessarily have the evening I want, but what I need for me is always here. I am cuddled and loved for my needs most of the time. Instead, I get to work on my second book which lends to no distractions. My time with me this holiday is a gift, and I get to say that again and again “I have what I need.” As the character Billy Mack sings in the movie Love Actually, “Love is all around us” (which he has to replace with Christmas to make some money as a washed out musician). Love IS all around us, an exciting future, an undulating unknown. Lead from the heart and you will be shocked how easy it is to ask for what you need.

Ask for what you need.