How do we really know the things we want?
If I ever get a PhD, it will be purely for vanity. I just think “Dr.” would look excellent in front of my name.
If you ask me if I want a doctoral degree, I can very easily tell you no. While I am a huge fan of academia, I am my most fulfilled self in the corporate world. So there’s no in-between.
But there are other things — other situations — where one begins to question whether the desire is truly one’s own, or simply the result of social conditioning that tells you what you should want.
For instance, how do you know you want a mini version of yourself, someone with your eyes, lips, and perhaps your partner’s hairline, because yours is receding rather aggressively? If you stripped away all external influence, would those desires remain the same?
Then again, aren’t those so-called external influences part of what makes us human? I love jewellery because I grew up watching my mother stack her wrists with bangles, her fingers with rings, and her neck with chunky pendants. I now enjoy period dramas because my best friend introduced me to Reign about ten years ago.
I am good at spotting errors and lapses in written documents because, during my second internship, my manager had me proofread every piece of comms the company sent out, from update emails to proposals and pitches.
Yet, while these influences form a meaningful part of who I am, they are relatively small in the grand scheme of things. There are bigger desires — the kind whose successful or unsuccessful pursuit can truly make or mar you.
How do you know whether your pursuit of something comes from a genuine desire or from common societal conditioning? Do you pursue only the things you feel a burning passion for, or are there other things you embark on, knowingly or unknowingly, to fulfil expectations?
In my experience, very few people are bold enough to admit that they do not really want the things they are going after. In fact, very few people have enough self-awareness to realise that, barring any outside noise, they do not desire these things at all.
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For many of us, life follows a timetable — specific milestones expected at specific ages: education, marriage, procreation. But strip away the peering and expectant eyes, and the story might take a different course.
In Mariama Ba’s “So Long a Letter,” the protagonist, Ramatoulaye, refuses an offer of marriage from two fairly respectable men. For one, she offers her friendship instead, but he refuses, saying he wanted “all or nothing.”
One could argue that his insistence on marriage simply reflects the status quo. But for Ramatoulaye, the refusal is a quiet defiance of it. A widow with twelve children, presented with the security of remarriage, a man to help provide for her and her children, yet she turns it down. She chooses her autonomy, the independence she has carved out for herself, over the transaction that the proposal represents.
While she defied the norm by turning down two marriage proposals, her decision was also shaped by her circumstances. The emotional toll of her first marriage and her deep disdain for polygamy were central to her refusal. In a sense, the very society that expected her to accept remarriage had also, perhaps unintentionally, influenced her to refuse it.
Perhaps we may never fully untangle the things we pursue out of genuine desire from those shaped by societal conditioning because, in the end, we are mosaics of all our experiences.
But when you think about the things you want, big or small, I hope you feel something stir within you. A quiet tingling in your heart, the way parents say their hearts expand when they look at their children. Because perhaps that is the closest we come to our truest desires, beneath all the noise.
Here are some movies, a book, and songs currently getting me through life.
The Good Doctor
The other Bennet Sister
Parlour Wife by Foluso Agbaje
Safe by Kotrell
Colorado by Johnny Drille, Ayra Starr and Young John
Make You Feel My Love by Anendlessocean
All my love, all my heart.
💛🌻
Impending “Dr Olaitan Omokehinde”
