I Want

Magnify

Imagine wanting what you already have.”

Her words stop me cold, freeze my deep and purposeful breathing.

“What,” I think, “did that crazy hippie lady just say?”

I try to resume the assigned task, mindfully inhaling the chilled air of the fitness center and balancing my sharp sitz bones on a borrowed blue cushion. I will my swirling mind to settle softly like a leaf to the ground. But Mary Love continues to hijack my piss-poor attempts at being in the now.

“Imagine,” she says, “wanting all the things you already have. Feeling no need to desire anything more.”

I briefly crack open my eyelids and take stock of Mary Love, her long silvery rope of hair, the deeply grooved crow’s feet testifying to multiple decades of mirth. She is a walking stereotype, the poster-goddess for mindfulness meditation. Usually the group of us—a bunch of homo sapiens whose clearest commonality is our crippling levels of stress—sit in silence to wrestle with our ruminations. Today, apparently, the Universe suggested that Mary Love give our brains a little economic mysticism to chew on. As I shut my eyes with a small sigh, I feel like the Universe is pointing an accusatory finger at me.

The phrase “I want” routinely makes the Top Ten list on my daily inner monologue. But it’s typically followed by a groaning “Dammit, I can’t. I’m broke.” I struggle between my two masters—Desire and Debt. My desires are myriad and range from acquiring the perfect belted wool jacket to taking a tropical vacation.

The bulk of my debt is the byproduct of cultivating an education well above the social caste I was born into. Over the course of many years, I have borrowed obscene amounts of money to pursue a string of poverty-propagating degrees: Associate of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Psychology, and my most recent act of masochism, a Doctorate in Sociology. So far, the biggest perk of my Ph.D. is that most people confuse sociology with social work and remark that I must be a very special person. Lately, I just smile, hope my embarrassment reads as humility and nod.

Tacit lying about my profession aside, I am typically an honest person. And so, I decide, it might be a good time to take candid stock of what it is I do have. Those things I should already be wanting.