The Motivation We All Share

People vary dramatically in their interests, ambitions, emotions, backgrounds, beliefs, knowledge, and skills.  The fact that people are drastically dissimilar strikes many as blatant, impossible to rationally deny.  But there is one thing that they all share whether they are aware of it or not.  All people, no matter what course of action they pursue, will all have the same motivation no matter what differing destinations they seek.  That common ground I refer to is the fact that that everyone does what they want to do 100% of the time.


Does this strike you as too simplistic?  The complexity of human nature does not nullify this truth, but actually confirms it.


Obviously, someone could want conflicting things--someone might struggle with something he or she deems or knows is evil and thus that person could want to fight the impulse while also wanting to succumb to it.  People can have contradicting, compartmentalized desires and act in an accordingly fractured way.  The truth that people solely do what they want can adopt many complex forms, yet all of these manifestations testify to the same inescapable truth.


I want to know the truth about reality and thus I live my life dedicated to uncovering it, as my blog evidences.  Someone else, however, may want to live fully for his or her own preferences and pleasures without regard to ultimate matters.  One of us will align more with reality and one will not, but we both are pursuing exactly what we want to.  One person may pursue good while another chases after evil, yet both are merely enacting the desires of their heart.  No matter what someone does, he or she wants to commit those actions to at least some degree or he or she would never engage in them to begin with.


Since no one can ever avoid doing what he or she wants, for no one can choose willpower over desire without first wanting to make that choice to begin with, then the only thing we can do is, if we discover that such a thing as good exists, to orient our desires around what is good.  Of course, this may require a transformation of our core longings and our deepest habits, and that is not something that comes easy.  Even then, we would merely be exchanging one want for another.  We all, whether we admit it or not, have the same base motivation behind all of our actions and choices--our own desires, the motivation we all share.  Now, what will we choose to do with this truth?