Some things you want, and you can just have them. You want to read a magazine, so you go to the shop and buy one. Then you take it home and read it. Done. Easy. A little humdrum.
Other things you want, and you can’t have them right now. Actually, you can’t even have them if you make a sound plan and immediately take a few steps forward. You want a promotion, not your boss’s job but their boss’s job. A want, once identified, becomes a source of discomfort. To get the job you want, you first need to get your boss’s job, or something like it. And so this discomfort is productive.
Or perhaps you don’t have to do that first? Perhaps you can find a way to just get the thing you want? Worth exploring. Moving things between zones of want is a great trick, if you can pull it off.
Next, you may want some things that are just impossible. You want to have made different choices ten years ago so you can be a professional musician now. You choose to engage with reality here, or not. Why didn’t you make those choices back then? When you find out the reasons, you might continue to want this thing - or you might not. Once you engage with the reality of the want, you discover that you do not have this want.
This is actually similar to refusing to engage with the reality of the want. In this case, you do not actually want something. Sticking with this want will remain uncomfortable for you. It’s peculiar that you can end up at the same destination by two opposing routes (you engage, the want dissolves; you don’t engage, the want is unreal). But here we are.
This brings us to our final zone. You want something, it’s impossible, you’ve engaged with the reality of the want, and you still want it. I want climate change to be fixed - this belongs in this zone. As before, this unfulfilled want causes me discomfort, and this is discomfort that I choose in keeping wanting this. Amor fati.
You can respond to wants by taking action or changing your attitude. As we progress through these zones of want, first to last as I’ve laid them out, I’d suggest you dial up your focus on attitude and dial down action.
The above is somewhat informed by Covey’s Circles of Concern and Influence exercise. But as for eudaimonia, you’ll need to look elsewhere. These zones are pragmatic, not normative.
