The Song of Suffering

I want a cup of hot coffee but I don’t want to stand here for four minutes waiting on this kettle to boil to 180. I want the blue mug, the one that’s chipped at the corner, the one I keep meaning to throw out. I don’t want the other mugs for coffee. Those are for tea. Oh, also I want the house quiet. I just don’t want it too quiet. I want a little sound here and there. Like the good sounds. The sounds of birds chirping at 6am and the wind chimes chiming their crystal notes. I only don’t want the sound of the leaf blower. No, not the leaf blower!I want to sleep in. I want to be the kind of guy who’s up at five without setting an alarm. By the way, I don’t want to be tired. I don’t want to go to bed early. I want my phone in my hand, scrolling till I get to the end of the Instagrams. But I don’t want to hold the phone in my hand. I want to receive texts. I just don’t want to answer the one I got.I want my knee to stop hurting. I want to run the bridge again the way I did before the knee pains. At the same time, I don’t want to stretch for twenty minutes to warm up. I want the body I had at thirty-one and I don’t want to have spent this much of my life thinking about the body I had at thirty-one. I want someone to say I look well. But I don’t want to be looked at. I want the second helping of my pounded yam and ogbono but I don’t want to be so full that I feel like an idiot.I want her to call me. I don’t want to be the one who called. I want to be understood without having to explain again and again, but then I want to explain anyway. This time with thirteen analogies and two ‘for examples’. I don’t want to be asked about it. I want her to arrive at my conclusion on her own so I can be gracious about it. I want to be right. I want to be right so badly that I’d take being right and alone over being wrong and in company. I want to be left alone. I don’t want to be lonely. I want to be invited so I can decline.I want this potential client to say yes. I don’t want the onboarding call though. I want a record-profit year, and I don’t want to send the email that starts it. I want my work to mean something. I want it to also pay. I want a slow week. I don’t want a slow week showing up in my bank statements. I want to be busy and look like i’m important. I want Friday to come fast. I don’t want the year going so fast. I swear I’m not lazy. My work ethics would show you.I want the rain to hold off till after my evening walk. I want a storm, a real one. Not this fickle one that starts and stops. I want the type that shuts down the power in two of the divisions here. That way, I can call off work together with many others and complain about the poor infrastructure and the government’s inability to respond to change. I also don’t want the fridge to defrost.I want my mother’s voice on the phone. I only don’t want to hear it getting older. I want to have called more. I don’t want to feel this while I’m on the call. I don’t want to want it, because wanting it is how I know how it goes.I want to be free and I want to be chosen. I want no obligations and I want to be needed by name. I want to be unknown and I want to be read. I want silence and I want somebody to tell me something. I want less. I want more of the less. I want to want less than I want.I want the mind to be quiet during meditation, which is a bit like wanting the ocean to hold still so I can look at it properly. I want the insight I had on Tuesday to come back on demand. I want the good sit. I don’t want to sit for forty minutes to get the good sit. I want the fruit without the fruiting. I want to stop wanting. I want that one more than most of them. I don’t want to become a person who wants to stop wanting, because I’ve met a few of those ones. I want this damn wanting to be finished without me having to be the one who finishes the wanting in the first place. I just so desperately want it lifted. I want it free of charge.I want to stop worrying. I want to worry properly first, thoroughly, all the way to the end of it, until I solve all problems and then stop. I want to have thought of everything. I don't want to think about any of it. I want the small hard rehearsal at 3 a.m. where I say the sentence I'll have to say, and then say it better, and then say it a third way that's in essence, the same as the first. I want to be told it's going to be fine. I don't want to be told that by someone who doesn't know exactly how hard it is. I want to stop checking. I want to check one more time so I can stop. I want to be the person who doesn't do this, and I want to be that person retroactively, so that the last twenty years get amended. I don't want to be careless. I want to put it down and I want to keep holding the handle, you know, just in case.I want this essay to land. I don’t want to have wanted it to land. If I sing this wanting and not wanting long and hard enough, with the same pitch, with the same little muscular clench at the front of the chest, I would come to find that one note, and it plays it against everything. If I played it long enough, I may stop finding the singer. If I looked at it long and hard enough, I start to notice the “I” in the song. The “I want” and the “I don’t want” are the same “I”. I want the coffee hot. Who wants it? I want this pain to end? Who wants it? Something wants it. The wanting is definitely appearing. And it’s a pull, an ache, a leaning-forward. God, take this thorn from my side! I search to find this “I” that’s leaning and there’s an embarrassment, like reaching for a step that isn’t there.I want.I don’t want.I want.These prefixes! Don’t you hear them in the mind? Don’t they haunt you? So damn sticky, aren’t they? So damn sticky, this “I”. How do you even catch them? Just like how you notice the fridge’s hum only when it stops, that’s how obvious it is to hear this ceaseless “I” and then one’s able to see clearly that what is is already what is. My wanting can’t change what is already the case. How could I learn to just accept this? What would it take to? My coffee’s already cold. And the leaf blower’s blowing already.My coffee’s already cold. And the leaf blower. It’s still blowing. I have not been writing as frequently as I thought I would. At this time, Life has called me to be more present with other things. But if you’re new here, Contemplative Currents is to be a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com