Reducing desires - paring down

Now look how many wishes you have left – three is a good number [no, I’m joking sorry].

The more we have, the more difficult it will be to either achieve them or temporarily forget them, on the other hand to have too few may be limiting us in wider life.  There is a balance to be made here.

The number of objectives we set for ourselves does seem to correspond to the level of complexity of our memory – our mental models, - which in turn of course are partly a function of our ability to learn and also a function of how much experience we have had. 

If we are a simple soul whose environment has been relatively stable and whose world is closed and somewhat unchanging [for the time being], our objectives may be extremely simple. 

As one of my perhaps less subtle pals once said ‘food, fucking and fun’.  I’m not sure they were in that order priority wise from my memory of him, but you get the gist.

But those with a well developed ability to learn and therefore something of an insatiable curiosity [the two tend to go together], often develop very large numbers of objectives all to do with doing things to find out more. 

I suspect this is where I fit in somewhere – before I was ill, I loved travelling because I liked to find out about different cultures and see different countries, I liked different sorts of food and tastes because I had an insatiable curiosity to find out more about food, I read and read and read – just because I liked finding out things, I had given up watching television because it was invariably biased and told me practically nothing over a tediously long time  - 1 hour of excruciating boredom for 2 minutes of dubious facts   …. You get the picture.  I am an insatiable ‘finder outer’. 

I will openly admit that my objectives include ‘food, fucking and fun’ but the priorities may be slightly different for me than from my beloved pal.

I once flew in a microlight over Niagara falls,with a pilot who was well aware I was terrified because all he got out of me were squeaks.  Fun indeed but no food and no chance of a f***!

Too many objectives simply results in a vast list you will never achieve, which worries you, gives you no peace and totally prevents any form of spiritual experience.  By all means keep the list for a rainy day when you need something to do, but, now you need to be ruthless and pare it down and down and down.