Are your desires your own? Or are they what society taught you to want?
We are slaves to our desires.
Naval calls desires "a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you reach the thing you want."
Perhaps it's not unhappiness, but a lingering sense of unfulfillment.
Either way, something foundational seems worth asking:
What do you really want?
If you're not clear on what you want, you cannot achieve it.
Going down the path of finding deeper answers to what you want is the starting point for living an intentional life.
I have found myself going down this line of contemplation many times in my life.
And it sometimes left me feeling disoriented, unsure, and chaotic.
But despite the ambiguous nature of this pursuit, it serves as the foundation to give birth to a dancing star.
Nietzsche wrote: "One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
The chaos of questioning. The star of authentic desire.
Or more simply put, the life you actually want.
Because the alternative of unintentionally going after things is not the answer.
Time is too short. Every day is too valuable.
I find it hard to answer whether a desire is genuinely rooted in my unique self or something I have mimicked from the rest of society.
And I don't think you are able to answer this question in your head.
Rather, you answer it through action.
A better, more approachable question is:
Does something give you energy or take energy from you?
Your body knows.
Pay attention to expansion or contraction in your chest. To the subtle signals of your nervous system.
Does this path make you feel larger or smaller?
This ties back to your intuition and your subconscious, which are the sources of better answers to this question.
Through that iterative process of doing something, assessing what it does to your energy, and then readjusting your life choices, you get closer to where your highest potential and most fulfilled life exists.
The pursuit is messy. Then clear. Then messy again.
Each cycle brings you closer to an answer that's truly yours.
Question your desires.
But do so through action, not thinking.
Yes, there's a paradox here. Even the desire to "find your authentic self" might be socially programmed.
But I'll make this assertion anyway, grounded in a maxim I have confidence in:
Becoming more fully yourself is always worth the pursuit.
Even if the idea itself came from someone else.