Alan Watts’ Life Advice Will Leave You Speechless – What Do Desire?

what do you desire what makes you itch what sort of a situation would you like let's suppose i do this often in vocational guidance of students they come to me and say well we're getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do so i always ask the question what would you like to do if money were no object what how would you really enjoy spending your life well it's so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system crowds of students say well we'd like to be painters we'd like to be poets we'd like to be writers because everybody knows you can't earn any money that way or another person says well i'd like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses i said you want to teach in a riding school let's go through with it what do you want to do when we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do i will say to him you do that and forget the money because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time you'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living that is to go on doing things you don't like doing which is stupid better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way and after all if you do really like what you're doing it doesn't matter what it is you can eventually turn it uh you could eventually become a master of it the only way to become a master of something to be really with it and then you'll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is so don't don't worry too much that that's uh everybody's somebody's interested in everything and anything you can be interested in you'll find others but it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to go on spending things you don't like doing things you don't like and to teach your children to follow in the same track see what we're doing is we're bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we're living in order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing so it's all wretched no vomit it never gets there and so therefore it's so important to consider this question what do i desire well when we answer that question in a naive way we figure out that we want a desire what we want is to control everything to create girls that don't grow old apples that don't rot clothes that never wear out conveyances that get from one place to another instantly so we don't have to wait power available to do anything that you could conceive and do it just instantly like that to get this funny technological omnipotence but if you take time out to think about that and really go into it with your full strength of imagination and find out whether that's where you want to be you will soon see that's not what you want because the moment you have a situation where you are really in control of things that is to say in which the future is almost completely predictable you will see as i said last night that a completely predictable future is already the past you've had it that's not what you want you want a surprise you don't know what that's going to be because obviously it wouldn't be a surprise if you did you want a pleasant surprise but like you say what sort of a surprise would be pleasant [Music] you can't really answer that because you know if there are to be such things as pleasant surprises there must also be unpleasant surprises there must be rude shots and that's the way that's that seems to be the thing that really excites people but quite certainly there comes out of this inquiry a feeling of real disillusionment with the ideal of power to be in power to be in control is not something that any sensible person wants imagine the situation of big brother to be glued day and night to a highly defended office with telephones television screens watching peeking spying on everyone and anything getting all this information together why you could never leave the office yeah what a pauper this guy is completely deprived because he wants to be in control because he wants power [Music] people are frustrated in love if you're jilted there's a natural tendency in a human being to seek power as a substitute and that's a very negative thing it's like having a bad temper to seek power after you're frustrated in love you should try and get back on the love beam because nobody wants power [Music] now you may say that shirking responsibility that if you were a really responsible person you would go out for power and try to use power to the best possible advantage for the benefit of all all right what would be the benefit of all ask them what do you want me to do with this power i'm dictator what would you like me to do well nobody knows because they haven't thought it through they think of all sorts of short-range things and they are largely conflicting and confusing because they're not well thought out but again when it finally comes down to it nobody wants to be god and you do not want power you don't want to control it and therefore these zen buddhist masters that i met and others were not super occultists and very many westerners who visited japan expecting to get a uh satori as a result of which they would know everything and control everything we're grievously disappointed and said there's not much in this after all [Music] you